A hiss from deep in the imp’s throat. “Didn’t I tell you not to use it without me?”
“I’d be dead if I hadn’t.”
“There are worse things than dead.” The imp glared from egg-blank eyes.
Harric explained Sir Bannus’s siege. How Harric had used the witch-stone to move invisibly across the cliff so he could detonate a hidden fire-cone charge.
Fink’s needled mouth stretched into a grimace that might have been a sly smile. “My witch-stone saved you tonight. Saved the old knight’s mission. Saved Ambassador Brolli. Bet that feels good, too. Made you the big hero. Bet you want to hold on to that kind of power.” The imp scrabbled closer. “This was our agreement: I help you, you help me. You want the power of the stone. You like it. I can smell it. And you can’t keep it without me. Now you give me what I want. I require a master—a blood-soul compact that binds us in this life and the next. That’s the price of heroes.”
Harric’s stomach tightened. “We talked about this before. I can’t do that.”
A hiss like a swarm of wasps gurgled up in Fink’s throat. “You think you can keep my stone and use it without me? You think you can enter the Unseen alone? You won’t last an hour. Alone, you’re an injured calf ringing its own dinner bell for the wolves and gib-crows of the Unseen. The only reason you weren’t eaten by one tonight is that the spirits were too scared to get near that mad-brained immortal and his mad-brained immortal horse. Don’t believe me? Think I’m bluffing? Look at them. Now that he’s gone, the scavengers are there.” Fink gestured to the ruined camp below.
Harric hesitated.
“Look on what you’ve done,” Fink said. “Know what’s at stake.”
Reluctantly, Harric slid forward until he sat on the edge of the shelf with his legs hanging down. Looking between his knees at the rubble and splintered siege towers made him dizzy, but he closed his eyes and pushed his mind toward the oculus at the top of his consciousness. The window widened at his pressure until he rose partway through it into the Unseen, and peered down at the killing field.
The spirit world was bright with the essence of mist from the waterfall. It formed a bright fog that obscured visibility beyond what lay immediately below the ledge, but among the massive boulders, Harric made out a dozen or more bright spirits of men. To his relief, they paid no attention to him, for they were preoccupied with avoiding several darker spirits in attendance. Harric’s stomach rose as he studied them. They were hunched and shadowy figures—some winged, some with more than one head or more than four limbs—and they appeared to be either hunting the men among the boulders, or else watching them like cats with full bellies watch cornered mice.
The imp pointed to a flat slab of rubble on which a cluster of vulturelike spirits hunched over one of the slain and fed, heads low. The bright echo of a man writhed beneath them, and its pitiful wail drifted across the essence-rich air to rake Harric’s conscience.
One of the vultures looked up from its meal and straight into Harric, sending a spear of cold fear through his middle. Harric let out a cry of dismay and collapsed back into himself, willing his oculus shut behind him. To his horror, the oculus had become sluggish and remained partly open, like a heavy-lidded eye at the top of his mind. The vulture spirit had stunned the aperture, leaving him open for an easy snack. He imagined the thing dipping it talons into his head and scooping him out like a soft-boiled egg.
Opening his eyes, he stared about to reorient to the Seen, where the flat slab lay lonely and abandoned in the moonlight.
“That could be you feeding the birds, see?” said Fink. “You need me. Only reason they don’t come for you now is because I’m here. Without me, you’d be worse than dead.”
Harric nodded and scooted himself away from the brink to return his back to the wall.
“But I require a master,” said Fink.
“You—don’t understand—”
“I understand fine. You go back on this agreement and I will take back that oculus. I will take back that stone. I will undo the seal on your loving mother’s grave and let her mad spirit free—”
Fink stopped. He jerked his head to the side to see something beyond Harric on the ledge. In the same instant, he vanished in a cloud of swirling shadow.
“Harric!” Caris called. “Who’s up there with you?”
Harric’s heart leapt into his throat. He turned to see her just as she gained the top of the stairs at the far end. Plastering a smile over his terror, he waved. She did not smile or wave. She drew her sword and strode purposefully up the shelf.
“Just me,” Harric called. “All is well.”
Her frown relaxed, but she did not put her sword away. As she strode up the ledge, she held up a candle lantern in her off hand.
Harric let out a long breath of relief. She hadn’t seen Fink. If she had, she’d be screaming.
The combination of silver moonlight and golden lantern made her glow like a vision. She’d tied her hair back in a simple warrior’s tail, thrown on boots and breeches, and belted her sword over her nightshirt, which hung to her knees like an airy surcoat. The curves moving under that thin fabric sent a thrill through his core. At that distance, he could even imagine her as the same size as he. It wasn’t until she drew nearer that the towering height and hard muscle of her horse-touched body became undeniably clear, and the vision shattered.
“You’re alone,” she said, as she neared and her eyes drilled to where Fink had been.
This isn’t over. Fink’s voice drifted into Harric’s mind through his oculus. You try to hide in that little fort and I’ll drag you out in front of your friends.
Harric turned his head away and murmured, “Where would I go? Piss off for a while.”
“Who are you talking to?” When Caris found the ledge beside him empty, her eyes widened and she set her back to the cliff. “Is your mother here?”
“Gods leave us, no. Her ghost is never coming back. I’m alone.”
She looked at him like she suspected him of madness. “Then who are you talking to?”
“My shadow?” He forced a welcoming smile. “Sorry to scare you. Come sit with me.”
She made no move to sit. Her brow remained bent. “You need sleep, Harric. You look terrible.”
“Please. Sit.” He scooted forward to hang his knees over the shelf and patted the stone beside him. “Besides, you must be upset about something or you’d be sleeping yourself. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Some of the worry drained from her brow. With a tentative half-smile, she sat beside him. Tall as she was, her feet hung below his, and he had to look up to meet her eyes. Like all horse-touched, she wasn’t merely taller and heavier than most men, she was also stronger and broader in the shoulders. Most men found that repugnant. Harric had ceased to wonder why he did not. He’d always been smaller and leaner than most men, so he’d never derived his sense of manhood from size or strength. Plus, she beat the snot out of people who hurt him, which was handy.
Her eyes flicked to him and away. “What are you smiling about?”
“You.”
Her brow furrowed and she twisted the ring on her smallest finger.
He knew what was coming, and his stomach dropped. Whenever they were alone, that cursed ring was the monster in the room with them. He ran a hand through his hair and gave her a grim smile. “Wish you had accidentally given me that ring, instead of the other way around. On my finger, it wouldn’t have changed a thing: you’d still have your natural indifference toward me, and since I already loved you, its enchantment wouldn’t change me at all. The only inconvenience would be that it would be stuck on my finger.”
She raised her eyes to his, a rare treat, but short-lived, as she flushed and looked down at the stubborn band of witch-silver.
“I mean it, Caris. If I could switch it, I would.”
“It isn’t always bad,” she said, twisting it around and around. “Sometimes I even… I don’t know. It makes me feel…” She scowled, then her e
yes flashed, and she stole an angry glance. “Then I remember that’s just the enchantment, tricking me, and I want to smash something. It’s like some invisible hand keeps turning my face to you when I try to look away.”
Harric clenched his jaw and looked out over the valley while she wrangled her anger.
Mist sighed up from the well of the waterfall, rising in moonlit clouds and sprinkling their ledge with a breath of clear river water. He avoided looking at the rubble, where he knew the vulture spirits still lurked in the Unseen, and instead lifted his gaze to the silvered faces of the crags above the opposite side of the valley.
She let out a loud sigh and seemed to relax, leaning into him and sharing warmth. It would have been a peaceful moment, if he didn’t know a vengeful imp lurked there, just beyond their vision.
“How did you do it, Harric?”
“Mm? Do what?”
She took a breath, then turned to hold his gaze, something very difficult given her horse-touched nature. “Tonight, during the battle, how did you creep out on this ledge without anyone seeing?”
Something tightened in his chest. “What do you mean?” He licked his lips. “I was on my belly here, and then I stood and ran.”
No lie there. Only evasion.
“Harric, I was looking for you. I came up and checked on the ledge, thinking you might have been shot there, and it was empty except for the bodies of the guards who had died trying to cross it before you. I had to back up onto the stairs because the crossbowmen in the siege towers loosed their bolts at the merest glimpse of me. There is no way you could have crept out here without them seeing you, but then I saw you clear as day”—she slapped the ledge as punctuation—“right in the middle of the ledge.”
The pain that now shone in her eyes cut a hole through his heart. But he could not tell her the truth yet. She was still totally under Sir Willard’s thumb with regards to rules against magic use. If there were ever to be any chance of her accepting the Unseen, he would need time to prepare his case.
“I guess I can see how you’d think that,” he said. “It was a scary situation. Crossbow bolts flying. Bannus riding up and down. It’s not like you could get a great look. Did you consider you just didn’t see me here in the confusion?”
No lie yet. Please, Caris, let it go; don’t make me lie.
But Caris grimaced as if in pain. She closed her eyes and raised her hands to her ears as if to shut out his voice—as she did when one of her horse-touched fits was coming on. “Harric, Ambassador Brolli killed the witch in Gallows Ferry,” she said, as she began to rock back and forth. “And when a witch dies, they drop their witch-stone. But we never found it. You were right there, and…did you…?”
Alarum blasts couldn’t have stunned Harric more. How could she have guessed this? Suddenly the weight of the egg-sized stone in the inner pocket of his shirt felt heavy and obvious. He shifted his arm to conceal it and stammered, “Caris—you’re making me nervous, rocking like that—you could fall—”
“A stone from the Black Moon might really taint you,” she said, as if reciting a well-rehearsed speech. “That’s what they say. Even if you just touched one. Maybe you didn’t know what it was and you—ah—” She clenched her teeth and rocked even harder.
Cobs. Harric laid a hand on her wrist to still her rocking and coax the hand from her ear. “Caris. Listen to me.”
Repeating those words, he waited, and gradually she stopped rocking. With what seemed like tremendous effort, she lowered her hands from the other ear. And though she did not open her eyes, he knew she listened.
“Caris, I did not pick up a witch-stone.” He hated himself for the lie, but he spoke it perfectly, as if it was the purest truth—just as his mother taught him—all the while despising every syllable. “No taint. You’re worried about nothing.”
She started rocking again. “You might have touched it accidentally and not even known it. Just now you were talking to air, Harric. Are you hearing voices?”
“Yes—well, yours and mine, I mean—”
She hit him in the arm, and her eyes flashed. “It isn’t funny. I saw this ledge last night. You weren’t there. Then you were. Was it Ambassador Brolli’s magic?” A flicker of hope lit in her eyes as this new idea took hold. Harric closed his mouth and looked down at his hands, knowing how she’d take it. “It was Brolli’s magic!” she said. “Why didn’t I see it before? That’s why you won’t tell me. You promised Brolli you wouldn’t tell, because he knows Willard wouldn’t approve. And you knew I wouldn’t approve.”
Harric denied nothing, thereby confirming everything, and the lie slid between them like an irrevocable lens of shadow. It dimmed her and chilled the warmth between them as if they were separated by a vast gulf.
Her attention went inward, where he imagined her busily assembling the less-terrible fiction that explained his behavior: that it wasn’t an incurable disease that afflicted him, but a temporary malady. Relief rinsed the worry from the lines of her face, but anger suddenly bathed Harric, and he had to turn his face away in case it leaked out of his eyes.
Why should he have to hide the truth? With that witch-stone he’d saved her life—all their lives—and probably the Queen’s. It wasn’t a taint. It was a talisman. And their opposition was idiotic. He wished he could show her, explain it all with a clear conscience, but it was too complicated for that. It would take time and care and patience to overcome tradition and Willard’s influence, and help her see things clearly.
But he would tell her. He would plan it carefully, think it through, and introduce it by steps. He would come clean to her one day. This simply wasn’t the time.
Her eyes now clear, Caris punched him again in the arm.
“Ow! What now—”
“If Willard saw what I saw at the pass, he’d cast you out, Harric.”
“I saved his stinking life!”
“He is a man of honor. He’d toss you out and say, ‘Good riddance! Better die in honor than live in shame.’”
“That’s insane.”
“You used Brolli’s magic after he specifically told you not to. You ignored him, and you ignored the Second Law forbidding magic. It shows you don’t respect the rules, Harric.” Caris clenched her teeth. “What will I do if he casts you off? I can’t lose you. This damn ring will torture me until I go with you, so I’d have to abandon Willard and my apprenticeship—and I can’t do that. It would tear me in two.”
“We’re going to get that ring off as soon as we get to Brolli’s people.”
“Where you will stock up on more of his people’s magic?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She climbed abruptly to her feet, a new look of decision in her eyes. “Your tricks always bring trouble, Harric. Always. So listen carefully to what I’m about to say. If I find out you touch Brolli’s magic—or any other magic—again, I will abandon you. I swear it. I don’t care how much the ring hurts me. I will chop this ring off my finger if that’s what it takes. I will not be tainted by magic or dishonorable trickery.”
Without waiting for a response, she turned and stalked away, her candle dashing shadows behind her.
Harric hung his head between his knees and let out a long breath. Shame and anger tore his insides. He longed to follow her and confess. To apologize for the lie. To explain. But then what? Give up this proven power to protect everything they loved—to protect the Queen, to protect his friends—when even Sir Willard could not? So what if his power was the power of trickery and magic? He’d shown over and again the good he could do with it. But none of them recognized it.
A growl of frustration escaped him.
“Sweet romance you got there, kid.” The imp had materialized right behind him, cutting him off from the back of the ledge. “Shame if anything happened to it.”
There is no contract but the contract between equals.
All else is subjugation, which henceforth we will none.
—Queen Chasia on freeing bastards and
women
3
Unbound
Harric’s head went so light with panic that he almost toppled over the rim. Diving to the side, he tried to scoot to the back of the ledge, but Fink moved between—as quick as Harric’s own shadow—his lipless mouth gleaming like a hedge of needles.
“What’s wrong?” Fink said.
Harric dove again, and this time, Fink made no attempt to mirror him, and Harric practically embraced the cliff. Setting his back against the stone, he choked out a curse. “What the Black Moon are you trying to do?”
Fink’s grin never faltered. “I thought you would dislike it if your girlfriend saw me, so I moved behind you. Is there a problem?”
The imp’s tone was mocking. He’d guessed exactly how Harric would take it if he moved behind him, and had done it as a warning of what might happen if Harric tried to stiff him.
Fair enough. Harric let his breathing calm. “You heard all that? What she said?”
“You used Ambassador Brolli’s magic,” Fink mimicked. “That’s why you won’t tell me.” Fink let out a cough that might have been a laugh. “She’s a real plum. Did most of the lying for you. Not many girls would do that for a guy.”
Harric frowned. “I can’t tell her yet. I need time to help her understand.”
“Oh, sure. Just give her time. With a little warming up, she and I will be best friends.”
Harric’s hands balled into fists. How had he become the knave in this ballad? He was supposed to be the hero. The bastard with a golden heart.
“The fact is, she’ll find out sooner or later, kid.”
“I’m not a kid. I’m almost twenty.”
“Ooh, so old? You don’t want to know how long I’ve been around, but let me put it do you this way: to me, you’re a baby. ‘Kid’ is me being generous.”
Harric blinked. “How long have you been around?”
“Let’s just say if I was your grandfather, there would be more than one ‘great’ in front of that title.”
The Jack of Ruin Page 2