It wasn’t his body, she reflected. It was in his eyes. In the way he looked at her.
“Have you tried dropping hints?” Ignata asked.
“I dropped boulders of hints,” Cerise said. “He pulls himself back every time. It’s not working.”
“I don’t see how it couldn’t.” Ignata bit her lips. “He’s obviously all about getting with you.”
“Maybe he doesn’t get it,” Aunt Pete said. “Some men—”
“Have to be hit over the head with it. Yes, Mother, we know.” Ignata rolled her eyes.
“I don’t want to just throw myself at him.” Cerise grimaced.
“No, that would be bad.” Aunt Pete frowned. “You said he was a soldier. You don’t suppose … ?”
“Oh, Gods.” Ignata blinked. “You think something could be wrong down there?”
All of them looked at William, who chose this precise moment to slide the wet shirt back on his back, which required him to flex, raising his arms.
“That would be a shame,” Cerise murmured. Maybe he was impotent. That would explain the frustration she saw on his face.
“Such a waste,” Aunt Pete said mournfully.
“There is nothing wrong with his body,” Grandma Az said. “It’s in his head.”
William turned. He walked past them to where Kaldar and Gaston haggled over a rock, pausing for a moment to look at her. Something hungry and sick with longing glared at her through his eyes, and then he turned away.
Like being burned.
“Oh, boy,” Ignata murmured.
“Now isn’t a good time for this sort of thing anyway.” Cerise sat up straighter.
“Are you crazy?” Aunt Pete stared at her. “Both of you could die tomorrow. Now is the perfect time for this. Live while you can, child.”
A hand rested on Cerise’s shoulder. She looked back. Aunt Murid nodded to her and walked away on her long legs, heading straight for William.
She said something, William nodded, and the two of them took off, Gaston at their heels. Kaldar stood there for a second, looking at a rock in his hands, shrugged, and followed them.
“What do you suppose all that was about?” Ignata asked.
“Who knows?” Aunt Pete shrugged.
TWENTY
SPIDER opened his eyes. He lay submerged on the bottom of the pool, in the cool shadowy depths. Above him, a wet sky glistened where the water kissed the air. He felt neither hot nor cold. Nothing troubled the water. He was utterly alone, floating weightless, watching from the shadows as the sunrays filtered through the water, setting it aglow.
If he closed his eyes, he could pretend that he was diving in the translucent waters far to the south, where a chain of the New Egypt islands stretched from the eastern tip of the continent far into the ocean. Swimming there, gliding above the coral reefs, surrounded by life but blissfully free of humanity, brought him a sense of peace and the simple thrilling exhilaration of being alive.
Alas, he wasn’t diving in the ocean now. Spider allowed himself one last moment of regret and surfaced with a single kick, emerging without a sound.
The air was unpleasantly cool. The skin flaps on his sides closed, hiding the pink feathery fans of his gills. Among his many alterations, this was the least useful but the most enjoyable.
Spider grasped the edge of the well and pulled himself up. Above him the sun shone bright. The sky was a clear crystalline blue, but despite the rare sunshine, the swamp still looked the same, a primeval mess of rot and mud. To the left, the manor where he’d made their base rose among the trees, struggling for stately elegance and failing.
Veisan’s peacock blue eyes greeted him. The contrast between those turquoise irises and her red skin never failed to surprise him. She looked at him with earnest expectation. Like a puppy, Spider thought. A murderous, lethal, psychotic puppy.
“Hello, m’lord,” Veisan whispered.
“Hello, Veisan.”
“Your skin has healed remarkably well, m’lord.”
Considering the amount of catalyst he’d dumped into the well water, the rapid progress was expected. “Veisan, why are you whispering?”
Her eyebrows crept up, making her look pitiful. “I’m not sure, m’lord,” she said in a slightly louder voice. “It seemed appropriate.”
She offered him a fuzzy towel. He gripped the stone rim of the pool, pulled himself out, and dried off. The liquid left light pink smudges on the yellow towel. It had been a few months since he’d sustained an injury severe enough to require underwater restoration. Spider touched his face, pleased with the smoothness of the skin on his cheek, where the burn blisters had been.
Veisan traded a meticulously folded stack of clothing for his towel. He began to dress. “Anything vital happen while I was under?”
“Judge Dobe ruled in the Mars’ favor. The Sheeriles have been given one day to clear the Sene Manor. Their reprieve expires tomorrow morning. Advocate Malina Williams sent the Sheeriles a letter detailing her apologies. She intends to appeal.”
Spider shrugged. “She’ll get nowhere with it. They should’ve gone with one of the local hacks. The Edgers prize familiarity more than skill.”
“We’ve received a message from Lagar Sheerile.”
Spider grimaced. “He wants reinforcements before the Mars attack him tomorrow.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
“He’s on his own. I don’t need him anymore.” Let the mud rats fight it out between themselves. It saved him the trouble of wiping them out to cover his trail, and this way none of his people risked injury. There was always a chance that Lagar would kill Cerise, but considering how well her mother was progressing, it was unlikely they would need her. Spider flung the water off his hair in a vigorous shake. He’d spare a few moments of regret for her death, the way one would mourn the destruction of a prized painting—the girl represented a forgotten martial art, and it was a shame to lose her. But in the grand scheme of things, she was of little use to him.
“Send a Scout Master out there. I want to know about the crossbowman.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
Veisan handed him a brush, and he dragged it through his wet hair.
“Lagar also reported an attack by a feline of unusual size.”
He looked at her.
“There are two attacks to date. The first was a sentry on duty. The second was a man returning from the settlement with purchases. In both cases the animal took the weapons belonging to its victims. Lagar Sheerile estimates it to be about four yards long and seven hundred pounds heavy. The circumference of the paw prints—”
“Back up. The bit about the weapons.”
“In both cases the animal took the weapons belonging to its victims.” Veisan repeated the sentence exactly, reproducing the same intonation and pauses she had used the first time.
“Does Lagar have an opinion as to why it’s attacking his men?”
“No, m’lord.”
Odd. Spider dismissed the rest of it with a flick of his fingers. “Any news of Embelys and Vur?”
“They are still in hiding at the perimeter of Mar territory.”
He didn’t really expect them to capture Cerise. But one could always hope … Spider ran his hand across his cheek. Stubble. He’d have to shave.
Veisan produced a shaving kit, the soap already whipped into thick foam. He took it.
“What else?”
“John reports that the subject has regained consciousness. He says that in two days she will either be ready for instruction or her brains will ooze out of her ears, m’lord.”
“I take it he’s still frustrated with the rushed schedule.”
“I believe so.”
Prima donna. “He’ll get over it.”
“And if he doesn’t, m’lord?”
“Then you can have him. Assuming you can limit yourself to one death.”
Veisan licked her lips nervously. “I’ll try. It’s been … a long time.”
He put his hand on her s
houlder, feeling steel cables of muscle tense under his fingers. “I understand, Gabrielle. I apologize for keeping you idle.”
She sniffled and a slow purple blush spread through her red skin. Like all agents, she had taken a different name when joining the Hand. He only used her birth name on special occasions. Spider made it a point to know the birth names of all agents under his command. Funny how a single word could have a devastating effect.
“Thank you, m’lord.”
Spider strode to the manor, Veisan following at his heels.
“My lord?”
“Yes?”
“What’s in that diary?”
He grinned at her. “A weapon, Veisan. A means to win the war.”
“But we’re not at war.”
He shook his head. “When we obtain the diary, we will be.”
* * *
WILLIAM raised his head from the rifle he’d finished cleaning and handed it to Gaston. Murid, Cerise’s aunt with the sniper eyes, had asked for his help. He’d spent the last three hours cleaning the rifles and checking the crossbows with her at the range behind the house.
Murid didn’t say more than two words to him, which suited him just fine, but she watched him. She wasn’t too subtle about it, and the constant scrutiny put him in a foul mood. At first William had guessed she was keeping him away from Cerise, but now he decided she had something else in mind.
Murid had empty eyes, the kind of eyes a man got after he’d been through some rough shit and redlined. Lost his brakes, lost himself. It made her unpredictable, and so William didn’t try to guess what she would do. He simply waited for the moment she would do it and prepared to react.
Murid test-fired a crossbow. The bolt bit into the target. She was good. Not as good as he, but then he was a changeling and his coordination was better. If she’d turned and fired at him instead, he wouldn’t have been surprised.
His ears caught the sound of light steps coming. He glanced back. Lark, running from the house, Wasp in her hand. She saw him looking and slowed down, a scowl on her face. Upset at being caught. She sauntered over and stood on his left next to Gaston.
William picked up the last crossbow from his stack, raised it, and fired without aiming, purely on muscle memory. The bolt sliced into his target next to the other ten or so he’d put into the bull’s-eye in the past hour.
Lark snapped her crossbow, imitating him, and fired. The bolt went wide.
“It won’t work,” Gaston told her with an expression of complete gloom on his face. “I’ve been trying to shoot like he does for the last hour.”
He’d been picking up the bolts out of the grass for the last hour, too, William reflected. The kid shot well enough. Good hand-to-eye coordination, good perception. With proper training, he would be an excellent shot.
Lark jerked her crossbow up, fired another bolt, and missed. “How come you can do it?”
“Practice,” William said. That and a changeling’s reflexes. “I’ve been a soldier for a long time. I can’t flash, so I had to use the crossbows a lot.”
Lark hesitated. “I can flash.”
“Show me.”
She grasped a bolt in her fist. Pale lightning sparked from her eyes down to her hand, clutched the bolt, and vanished. Another white flasher. Figured. Flash usually ran in the family.
“Nice!” he told her.
Lark offered him a narrow smile. It was there and gone almost as fast as her flash, but he saw it.
William turned to Gaston. “You?”
“None of the thoas can flash.” The boy shook his head, sending his black mane flying. The damn hair reached nearly to his waist. On the one hand, it was too long. If you grabbed the hair, you could control the kid’s head in a fight. On the other hand, the hair hid his face. He looked human enough in passing, but he’d fail close scrutiny. His jaw was too heavy, his eyes were too deep set under the wide black eyebrows, and his irises luminesced with pale silver when they caught the light.
Still, the kid needed a shock to the system. Proof that he was done with his family. A rite of passage. William pulled a knife from the sheath. “Cut it.”
Gaston’s eyebrows crept up.
“Cut the hair.”
Gaston glanced at him, glanced at the knife, and took the blade, his teeth clenched. He grasped a strand of hair in his hand and sawed at it with the blade. The black strands fell on the ground.
Lark crouched and picked them up. “It’s not good to leave the hair out,” she said quietly. “Someone could curse you with it. I’ll burn it for you.”
“Thanks.” Gaston grabbed another handful of his hair and sliced it off.
Murid opened her mouth.
Here it is. William tensed.
“It’s almost time for lunch.”
He nodded.
“It would be good if we knew what they were cooking in the kitchen,” she said. “If they’re cooking fish, we need to head to the house. Fish doesn’t take much time. If they’re cooking a pig, we have another half an hour.”
“I can go and ask,” Gaston said.
William sampled the wind. “They’re cooking chicken.”
Murid turned her expressionless dark eyes on him. “Are you sure?”
“Chicken and rice,” he said. “With cumin.”
“That’s good to know,” Murid said. “We have time, then.”
William had an odd feeling that something important had just happened, but what he had no idea. Behind him Gaston sliced another handful from his mane and deposited it into Lark’s hands. William loaded the next crossbow and fired. He would figure it out sooner or later.
LAGAR closed his eyes. It did no good—Peva was still there, even in the darkness of his mind.
“Look at your brother,” his mother’s voice whispered like the rustling of snake scales across the floor. “It’s because of you he’s dead. You weren’t smart enough to keep your brother safe.”
Slowly he opened his eyes and saw Peva’s body, blue and nude, on the washing table. A single lamp hung above it, its harsh glow concentrated by the fixture into a cone. The light clutched at the faces of two women, bleaching them into pasty masks. He watched them dip thick cloths into the buckets of scented water and rub the mud from Peva’s limbs. The dirty water ran off Peva’s skin into the groove on the table.
Peva was dead. He would never rise, never speak again. There was a horrible finality in death, an absolute and total ending. There was nothing to be done. No way to help it.
Lagar rolled his head back and took a deep breath. They spent their lives jerking and clawing their way to the top, and for what? To end up like this. On the table.
Tomorrow Cerise would come for him. Tomorrow evening either he or she would be on the table, just like this. This wasn’t what he wanted. In his dreams, when he was alone with nobody to spy on him, this wasn’t what he wished for.
“Why do you bother?” Lagar’s voice caught, and he forced the words out, raspy and strained.
Kaitlin stared at him from the gloom, a squat ugly thing, wrapped in her shawl. His mother. Like an old poisonous toad, he thought.
“Why do you bother?” he repeated. “He’s dead. The soul’s gone. Peva’s gone. Nothing left but this … shell. Dump it in the ditch. Give it to the dogs. He isn’t going to care.”
She said nothing, clamping her lips together. Disgust swelled in him. Lagar spun and left the room, slapping the door shut behind him.
CERISE padded out onto the verandah and closed the door behind her, shutting off the busy noises fluttering from the kitchen. Earlier, tired of making plans and choosing weapons, she’d come down there hoping to cook. Being in the kitchen, in the middle of bustle, standing over the fire, smelling spices, tasting food, and catching up on the Mire gossip usually comforted her. Today she cooked in a daze, listening to her aunts and cousins, while her mind cycled through tomorrow, wondering who else would die.
Then, before she knew it, dinner came. The entire family had gathered at the main
house, those who lived in the outer buildings, those who lived farther in the swamp, everyone came for the dinner before the fight. Every seat was filled. The kids had to be sent off to a smaller kitchen to eat there, just to make room.
Then she sat at the head of the table, in her father’s place. She listened to the chatter of familiar voices, looked at the familiar faces, watched small fights break out and dissolve into teasing, and knew with absolute certainty that tomorrow some of these chairs would be empty. Guessing and calculating which ones made her colder and colder, until she was shivering, as if a clump of ice had grown in the pit of her stomach. Finally Cerise could take it no more and snuck out.
She just needed some peace and a little quiet. She started along the balcony, heading to the door that led to her favorite hiding spot.
Steps followed her. Maybe it was William … She turned.
Aunt Murid chased her.
Figured. William snuck around like a fox. She’d seen very little of him. First, Murid took him off, then Richard and Cerise rode out and climbed a pine, to get a better look at Sene. At dinner William ended up in a corner, with Gaston next to him. She barely recognized the boy with his hair shorn off. What the hell was Urow thinking? Gaston was family. What was done was done, but it still felt rotten.
Cerise stopped. Aunt Murid stopped, too. Cerise read hesitation in the older woman’s posture and tensed. What now?
“Your uncle Hugh is a good man,” Aunt Murid said softly.
Well, that came out of nowhere. Murid didn’t speak of her younger brother, especially since he’d left for the Broken about twelve years back. He’d visit at the house every few years for a week or two and then leave again. When Cerise had gone to get the documents from him, he looked pretty much the same as she remembered him: fit, tall, muscular. His hair was an odd salt-and-pepper shade, but aside from that, he was pretty much a male version of Aunt Murid. But where Murid was harsh, Uncle Hugh was mild and soft-spoken.
“I only saw him for about an hour,” Cerise admitted. “Just to get the papers for Grandpa’s house. He looked well.”
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