The Jack of Ruin

by Stephen Merlino

  She gasped for air and her vision blurred with tears as the roar rose again in her ears. I can’t do this. I can’t! It has to end.

  Stumbling through the stable, she searched for tools. A wild new hope gave her strength.

  I can end it. I can end it now.

  *

  Harric retrieved his gear from the yard and lugged it to the stables. As he passed Molly’s stall, he saw Caris in the adjacent stall, at a worktable where the garrison repaired harnesses. He tossed his saddlebag over the rail behind Snapper, and returned to see what she was doing.

  “Hey,” he said, stopping at the open gate to the stall.

  Caris cursed and fumbled with a chisel that she held awkwardly in her right hand. In her left hand, she held a hammer.

  “Get out of here, Harric.”

  It took half a heartbeat for Harric to register the wild intensity in her voice, and another to realize she’d laid the back of her right hand on the worktable, palm up, fingers converging on the chisel to balance it vertically on the base of one finger.

  He didn’t need to guess which finger she balanced it upon.

  Harric lunged to her side and grabbed away the chisel. “What the Black Moon are you doing?”

  “Dammit, Harric!” She tore the tool from his grasp and held it out of reach as he grappled with her armored limb. Snarling, she shoved him back and slapped her hand back on the table.

  Harric bounced back and dove for the only thing he could reach in time, her hammer arm.

  “Please, Caris!”

  Furious, she jerked her arm away and thrust the hammer and chisel into his hands. “You do it, then.” Laying her finger on the table, she waited, chest heaving, eyes burning holes into Harric.

  Harric dropped the chisel as if it were a viper, and when she stooped to retrieve it, he kicked it away. “Moons take it, Caris. Stop it. You can’t do that to yourself.”

  A rough sob escaped her. Eyes brimming, she seized the front of his shirt. Half carrying him, half spinning him as if leading in a dance, she bore him to rear of an empty stall and pinned him against the planks. Splinters of the rough-hewn wood jabbed through his shirt into the skin of his back. Through clenched teeth, she said, “I—cannot—live—with this ring.”

  Harric’s throat grew tight. “I’m so sorry, Caris,” he said. “I hate that ring. I hate the way it hurts you. I hate that it was my hand that gave it to you. I wish every day it were on my finger.” He scanned her face and found only pain and shame there. “I can’t know what it must feel like, but I hate that you have to feel it, and I wish I could do something about it.”

  “It makes me think of you all the time, Harric. I can’t stop it. Like a stupid song stuck in my head. And it hurts.” She pounded her breastplate as if she could dampen the pain behind it. “I want to chop my heart out, too.”

  She turned to leave him, but he scuttled around her to block her path. Judging by the determination in her eye, she was going for the chisel again.

  “Just wait,” he said, heart and mind racing. “You don’t even know if it would work to cut it off. Brolli said it could really hurt you if it is forced off somehow. It’s magic. He said it is enchanted to stay on. And even if you cut your whole finger off—or cut the ring itself in two—its enchantments are entwined in your mind and your heart. Tearing them out could hurt you in ways you can’t even see—not to mention you’d maim your sword hand.”

  Caris groaned and hung her head. Some of the tension drained from her shoulders. She extended one hand to the side to steady herself against a plank partition between stalls.

  “Please,” said Harric. “The first thing we’ll do when we get to Brolli’s people is go to the magicians who made it; they’ll know how to do it safely.”

  Raising both hands to cover her ears, she squeezed her eyes closed and sank to her knees, the leather harness of her armor creaking.

  Harric took a step back. He didn’t expect her to fall into one of her horse-touched fits right here, not with her horse so near, but he wanted to give her space. He knew she was probably reaching out to Rag with her senses and drawing on that kinship to steady herself.

  Something tickled his wrist and dripped from his fingertips. Mother of moons, I’m bleeding. A small gash hooked across the heel of his hand. He must have gotten it when he dove for the chisel. Now that he was aware of it, it stung like a wasp sting.

  A wave of gratitude swept through him. Small price. It could have been Caris’s blood.

  Motion caught his attention, and he looked to see Molly had lifted her head to peer over the plank partition that separated the two stalls. Her greedy nostrils sucked at the scent of his blood, and the mineral stink of her breath wafted to Harric.

  Gods leave us, what a monster.

  He pressed a handful of straw over his wound and sidled to the opposite side of the stall. Caris no longer panted her breaths. As he crouched beside her, she stirred, and her hands fell away from her ears.

  “It’s driving me mad, Harric.” Hair hung before her face and concealed her expression, but her voice came out low and fraught. She rose, head bowed, her gaze on her hands, where she tugged at the ring.

  Gods leave it. How ironic was it that he, a bastard fighting all his life against the slavery of bastards and women, had inadvertently enslaved the woman he most cared for? That moon-blasted wedding ring was no different than the cruel masters he’d fought all his life, forcing her to love, bending emotions against their natural course. But he was helpless to do anything; the ring couldn’t be tricked in a wager or beaten in a card game like a slave master could.

  His frustration must have leaked from his eyes, because the next thing he knew, Caris grabbed him by the shoulders and kissed him, hard. She pressed hungrily into him. The ridge of her breastplate gouged his sternum, but he hardly noticed, because his heart and body responded instantly, rising to meet her.

  No. This isn’t her.

  He pulled back, turning his head away. Dammit. She’d never smashed a kiss on him like that before. She stepped back, and he studied the confusion of hunger and disgust in her face, wondering whether the ring might be getting stronger, or if her resistance was simply—finally—wearing down.

  “I’m sorry, Caris. You don’t want that. Not really.”

  “See what I mean?” She gave her mouth an angry wipe with the back of her hand, and her cheeks flushed. “If you ever let me kiss you like that again, I swear I’ll—” The sight of his hand stopped the words in her throat. She grabbed him by the wrist and swiped the bloodied straw away from his wound.

  “Stupid,” she muttered, face flushing again.

  “I must have cut myself—”

  “Stay here.” She stepped out of the stall and returned a moment later with one of the bandages from her saddle packs. Glaring, she bound the hand. Harric couldn’t tell if she was angry with herself for hurting him, or angry with him for endangering himself. He didn’t ask. Probably a little bit of both. When she finished, she met his eyes again. Strange how easily she could meet his eyes when she was furious. Sometime, when she was calmer, he’d have to ask if anger dislodged her horse-touched hatred of “touching eyes,” as she called it.

  At the moment, it felt like her glare would set fire to his eyeballs.

  She turned abruptly to leave, but he held her arm. “Promise you won’t try that again, Caris. The real Caris would never consider risking her sword hand.”

  The muscles of her jaw pulsed. “Don’t treat me like a helpless girl.”

  Harric actually laughed. “You, helpless. That’s funny. How many times have you saved my life—two, three times? I assure you, there is no danger of me mistaking you for helpless. But if anything is stronger than that ring, it’s your sense of honor. If you promise, you’ll be true to your word. So promise me.”

  She tore her arm free from his grasp, but held his gaze for a long moment, emotions warring behind her eyes. “I promise,” she said, as if each word might knock him down if she said it har
d enough. Then she stalked off to Rag’s stall.

  Relieved, he eased himself down against the back wall of the stall he’d ended up in. The new straw crackled as he found a comfortable position, releasing its sweet and comforting scent. Hanging his head between his knees, he let out a long, slow breath. His hands were trembling. The chisel upset him deeply. And whether he wanted to admit it or not, his heart ached, too. Three moons, his head ached: Don’t touch magic. Don’t sneak or pull any dishonorable tricks. Don’t stop me from hurting myself. Don’t touch me. Don’t let me touch you.

  A few more ultimatums and she might cure his love. He managed a wry smile.

  When he heard Rag’s hooves in the main passage of the stable, he raised his head and watched Caris lead the mare out and into courtyard. By chance he’d ended up in the center stall across from the main doors, which afforded him a view as she adjusted her saddle in the lantern light of the yard. Gods leave it, she was beautiful. No denying it. Well formed. Unpretentious. Driven. Stomped her enemies. Stomped his.

  “That’s it, torture yourself, Harric,” he muttered, as she led Rag out of his view.

  Molly’s unmistakable growl drove a spike of panic through him. A violet eye glowered at him through a gap in the partition between stalls. Moons, could Molly do anything but glower? Composed as she was of nothing but fury and violence, he doubted it. On the other hand, if he had been sliced and ritually bled for centuries by Sir Willard, he might glower, too. Fans of scars surrounded her eye like the rays of some cruel violet sun, each scar from a bloodletting that had once kept Willard immortal. Still, Harric had to credit Willard with a certain restraint in his cuttings: rather than the random and barbaric slashes he’d seen on Bannus and Gygon, Molly’s seemed restrained and deliberate. Civil, if that were possible.

  She growled again, eye blazing, as if challenging his thoughts, but she didn’t smash through the partition to take him. Maybe this was her sympathetic glower. But no amount of superficial civility could change the fact that Bannus and Molly both hailed from the same Mad God, so Harric scooted himself a few feet farther away along the back of the empty stall. Not the best place to recover his nerves after the trauma with Caris, perhaps, but he was too tired to get up and find privacy elsewhere.

  “Hey, kid,” Fink whispered in the air beside Harric’s ear.

  Harric startled and glanced around.

  “Didn’t want to spook you.” Fink’s hunched black form materialized beside him.

  Harric scrambled to close the gate to his stall and glanced up and down the stables to be sure no one approached.

  “How can you be here?” Harric said. “It’s day.”

  “Not quite. Dawn broke over the horizon, but it’s not over the crags here. We have some time.”

  “Actually, this isn’t a great time.”

  Fink studied him with his pupilless white eyes. “The girl. She’s upset you.”

  Harric looked at the batlike creature before him. He opened his mouth to speak but closed it. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Oh. Well, sure. If you mean I wouldn’t understand a girl twice your size kissing you and saying don’t you dare kiss me or I’ll hurt you, then yeah. You’re right.”

  Harric gave him a sharp look. “You were here for that?”

  “But if you mean I wouldn’t understand how you’re in love with her but can’t act on it even though she acts like she loves you because she’s under the spell of that ring, and since it’s not actual love, you have to bottle your feelings, even when she starts rubbing on you, so you’re basically walking around with a broken heart and a cob like a sledge handle all the time, then yeah, I don’t get that, either.”

  Fink quirked his bald black head to one side and looked at Harric.

  “Okay,” said Harric. “Maybe you’d understand a little.”

  “A little, he says. They don’t call us tryst servants for nothing, kid.”

  “What do you mean? A tryst servant. That’s what you are?”

  Fink nodded. “A tryst servant is what they call the moon servant of an Unseen magus—though in my case, I should say moon partner, not servant.” He leered, needle teeth chillingly bright. “You freed me from that.”

  “What does ‘tryst’ have to do with anything? In Arkendian, tryst means ‘secret romantic encounter.’” An image of a bunch of batlike Finks crawling about delivering love letters made Harric snort out a laugh.

  “That’s exactly what it means, kid. In the old days on the continent, one of the first things some novices did the day they became a Black Magus was to have their tryst servant lay a charm on the prettiest boy or girl they could find. It’s very unpopular with magi of the other moons, so they outlawed it in the Iberg Compact. But you of all people don’t need that; your big girlfriend can hardly keep from kissing you—”

  “You could help her!” The words exploded from Harric in a shock of realization.

  “Help her kiss you? I guess I could. I mean, I could get naughty if you really—”

  “No, I mean help get that ring off her finger.”

  Someone coughed outside the stables, and Harric jumped. He peered out to see Lane trudge past a door, calling someone to get a wheelbarrow. Lane disappeared, and Harric turned to Fink.

  “You could help, couldn’t you?”

  Fink’s inscrutable white eyes stared. “I’ve never been asked to un-charm someone.”

  “But you could do it?”

  A black tongue swept across Fink’s teeth. “That’s Kwendi magic on her finger. It’s like nothing I’ve seen. None of the three moons knows how it works.”

  “But it’s Unseen magic, right? Love is unseen.” Harric heard his voice rising defensively as the flutter of hope faded. “The Kwendi magicians put Unseen power in the ring, so you should be able to do something about it, right? Maybe undo it?”

  Fink let out a guttural hiss. “You’re clever. You think about things.”

  “It’s all I can think about, Fink. I hate seeing her like this.”

  “It’d be a lot easier if you just enjoyed it—I know! No slavery, I get it!” Fink held up his talons as Harric drew in breath to lash out at him.

  Harric sensed fear in the impit’s hesitation, as if the Kwendi magic scared him, but there was something else, as well. Greed? Ambition? “You’re curious, aren’t you, Fink? Why won’t you do it?”

  “I didn’t say I won’t. I will.” Fink’s face twisted in a grimace. “But it’s maybe dangerous. The Kwendi know how to capture moon magic in witch-silver. No magus in the entire Iberg Compact knows how they do it. So, sure, it’s Unseen power in her ring, but can I touch it? Can I change it? Do I suspect anything about how they put it in the witch-silver of that ring? No, no, and no. I don’t know a thing about it, kid. No one but the Kwendi know, and they aren’t sharing.” Fink licked his teeth again. “Still, we could be the first to take a look.”

  “Yes!” Harric spun about and pushed the gate to their stall wide. As he peered up and down the empty stables, his mind ran through destinations Caris might have gone, and settled on the makeshift stables up the river road.

  “What are you doing, kid?”

  “Come on. She probably took Rag up the river road. Let’s meet—”

  Brolli barked in his unmistakable tenor outside the stables. “Sir Willard!” It came from outside the entrance at the right-hand wing of the stables, and alarmingly close.

  Harric jumped back into the stall and retreated to the back corner.

  “Ambassador,” the old knight answered full and clear, as if he’d just entered the building. A few horses shuffled in the straw of their stalls, and Molly tossed her gigantic head so her mane flashed above the partition beside Harric.

  “Gods take it,” Harric muttered. “Fink, can you meet me up the river?”

  Fink had retreated with Harric into the corner nearest Molly’s stall, but he watched the planks of the partition as if he expected the Phyros to burst through at any moment. “That thing’s been l
ooking at me, kid. How do you people live with them? Don’t you know—”

  “The river!” Harric whispered. “Meet me there.”

  “You have a lot to learn about the Unseen if you think a spirit will go near a river, kid. And dawn’s coming. Between that and the river…” Fink shook his head. “Wait till tonight.”

  Brolli and Willard stopped outside Molly’s stall, and Harric dared not speak again. A blade of panic stabbed through his chest at the thought of either of them spotting Fink. “Go!” he mouthed, motioning frantically for him to leave.

  Fink’s grin only widened. Remember what I said about these so-called friends of yours? His mouth didn’t move, but his voice echoed in Harric’s head. Going to have to leave them, kid. They won’t accept the Unseen. They won’t accept you. That’s the price of heroes.

  I know! Harric thought back, unsure Fink could hear him. But not now—please go—just go!

  The man that walks his own road walks alone.

  —Arkendian proverb

  10

  On Broken Oaths

  Harric’s head rang with panic. “Go!” he mouthed.

  Fink lingered, waggling his taloned fingers in a grotesque yet effeminate farewell.

  And vanished.

  Closing his eyes, Harric leaned his head back against the planks and let out a long, slow breath, his heart hammering against his ribcage.

  The sound of a latch on Molly’s stall announced the knight’s arrival with Brolli.

  Cobs. By now, the knight would expect Harric to be gone up the river with Caris, and would yell at him for “idling about” when he should be moving. Plus, if Willard’s hex was still active, the last place Harric wanted to be was anywhere near him until the sun crested the ridge. As soon as Willard was inside Molly’s stall, Harric would slip away.