The Jack of Ruin

by Stephen Merlino

  “I’ve never had a partnership before. And I don’t know what my sisters will do. If I’m happy and it’s up to me, I stay. Keep me fed, and I stay. If not…” His black tongue swiped the front of his teeth. “Maybe I take my nexus and go.”

  Harric swallowed. “And how do you prove yourself to your sisters?”

  Fink sneered. “Same way you prove yourself to your Arkendian friends. Earn their respect. Defeat their enemies. Honor and obey them.” He spat out the last words like poison seeds. He glared at Harric. “Speaking of which, how long you going to keep up that valet act? If you’re going to survive in the Unseen, you need to be up at night with me. All that sword training and armor-polishing nonsense for Sir Whatsit’s going to wear you out. You won’t be able to stay up for your real training.”

  Harric narrowed his eyes. “You spent enough time in my cat to have learned that being valet to our most celebrated knight is nothing to sneeze at.”

  Fink’s bubble eyes widened. His head dipped and his grin widened. “Yeah. You knew about me in the cat? No hard feelings?”

  Harric shrugged. “I was angry when I figured it out. But then I realized I would have done the same thing if I’d been in your position. After all, I had just stolen your nexus. You needed to find out what I was all about before you acted, right?”

  “Yes.” Fink waited, watching Harric. “You’re not going to forbid me to ride in your cat?”

  Harric shook his head. “No need. His eyes go white when you’re in him. It’s pretty obvious.”

  Fink’s face squirmed into a frown. “That’s a limitation of the weaving.”

  “I could get some goggles for him, like Brolli wears. Then no one would see.”

  Fink let out a croaking laugh. “No one would suspect a thing.”

  Harric watched Fink bouncing on the cable before him. A strange transformation was taking place inside him. Many of the mental walls he’d erected around himself before this conversation were dissolving, letting in light and air to his spirit. A weight of worry lifted. He no longer feared he must murder for Fink; he no longer feared for the fate of his soul after death. Those blocks removed, he felt he could trust Fink as much as he could trust any fellow jack. More, in some ways, for their goals were aligned. They were partners. And as long as both were happy, they’d stay that way.

  He smiled.

  “Do we have accord?” Fink asked.

  Harric nodded. “Question sixty-six. We do.”

  “Good. Now get some sleep. You look like death.”

  *

  As Harric walked back through the chill air of the fire-cones, he paused to take stock of the evening’s discussion. He scratched Spook’s ears and looked over Mudruffle’s terraced gardens to the meadow where Father Kogan slept with Geraldine. The Mad Moon had sunk too low to light the valley, but it was easy to see that a high bank of fog did indeed creep up the valley. In another hour, it would cover the meadow and kiss the feet of the gardens. So much for Brolli’s scouting.

  Harric let his mind walk back over the course of the geas, carefully picking through the questions and answers.

  Did he trust Fink now? No. Moons, no. But he felt as good as he might if he’d partnered with another human trickster, like himself. Did Fink have secrets? Certainly. But so did Harric. He’d have to keep his wits about him in their partnership, and stay alert, playing his few cards close to his vest, make sure it was always in Fink’s interest to play true. These were risks and necessities he could live with. In what poker game was there no risk?

  He felt his spirit rising to this partnership.

  In an odd way, he felt better about this than he did his relationship with Willard. With Fink, he feared no judgment. With Fink, he felt no need to dissemble or put on artificial righteousness. He’d begun to weary of that façade with his friends.

  He smiled. The cat looked up with huge green eyes. “I’m all in, Spook. Wish me luck.”

  Put no trust in gods, for they are wild and flighty as sand in a river.

  —From Sayings of the Wandering Fathers

  18

  On Broken Hope

  Light moved on the other side of Harric’s eyelids. He threw his arm over his eyes and rolled over, groaning. Somewhere below his bed in the loft, Molly had been stomping and snorting and disrupting his sleep for what felt like the last hour. Weariness pressed him into the straw like a leaden coat. Then a lantern handle squeaked and someone knocked at the foot of the ladder to the loft.

  “Heave up!” Willard’s bull-throated bellow shattered the predawn silence. “Heave up, I say. Day approaches.”

  Caris stirred beside Harric and sat. “We’re up.” With a sharp knuckle, she gouged between Harric’s ribs, jolting him awake. Under her breath she said, “Harric, where were you last night? I waited up for you.”

  Harric groaned and tried to roll out of reach.

  “Grab a pair of axes from the tower, girl,” said Willard. “And meet me at Kogan’s camp in a quarter of an hour. I saw a grove of ash down there where we can cut lance staves. Boy, since you have letters, paint up a placard to post for Captain Gren—something to warn him the enemy has preceded him here, and to be alert. Then load and saddle the horses and bring one of them down to haul the lances back up. Molly…” Harric could hear the frown in his voice. “She’s in a mood, so I won’t be taking her down.”

  “Understood.” Caris’s voice, too near, again beat Harric back from the gates of slumber. “Is Brolli back?” she called down. “What news of the north passes?”

  “Didn’t learn a thing. Too damned foggy. We can be comforted that our enemy was just as hindered by it. Nevertheless, I want to be on our way by midmorning.”

  As the sound of Willard’s boots retreated into the courtyard, Harric felt Caris rise in the straw beside him.

  “Get up and look at me, Harric.”

  He opened his eyes. Anger colored her cheeks. Or maybe embarrassment. Then he recalled her visit to him in the cellar the night before, and he felt a twinge of guilt. “I’m sorry,” he said, forcing himself up onto an elbow to properly face her. “I didn’t want to disturb you. You looked so peaceful.”

  She returned his gaze, nostrils flaring. Then her chin rose, and she said, “Tonight, then. Don’t do that to me again.”

  “I won’t,” he said, truthfully. But even then, he knew he’d have to find some other way to avoid her bed. Gods leave it, that ring is bent on cornering me. And I’m a lump of ice if part of me doesn’t want to let it happen.

  She dressed quickly, and he used that as an excuse to turn his head away and flop back into the straw. Sleep came swiftly and left just as fast as rude hands seized him under the arms and hauled him to his feet.

  “You are not going back to sleep.” With a series of well-aimed thumbs to ribs, Caris herded him barefoot to the ladder. He tried begging. He tried cursing. He tried whining. Nothing worked. She kept jabbing. Residual anger fueled her, perhaps, and a humorless horse-touched intensity fortified her concentration. He almost toppled from the loft in his effort to escape, but once he got his feet on the ladder, he moved swiftly to the stable floor.

  Shivering, and now fully awake, he called up, “My boots?” He tried to put as much accusation in it as he could. The boots hit the ground without warning, so he just sighed and pulled them on.

  “You’re welcome,” Caris called down.

  The air felt damp and cold. Outside the stable doors, a thick fog stirred in an early breeze. He shivered at another memory of his mother’s murderous fogs, and jumped when Willard emerged from it like some black-armored specter.

  Willard glared at him, and Harric recognized the violet flash in his eye that indicated he’d taken the Blood again. Harric took a half step backward, but the knight ignored him. Willard bit on one of his replacement ragleaf sticks, then rolled it to one side of his mouth to spit a fragment into the straw. “Steer clear of Molly. She’ll be back to her grim and brooding self in an hour or so.”

  Harric nodded
, and Willard strode into the predawn fog, armor clicking and harness squeaking, just as Caris climbed down from the loft.

  “Hear that?” Harric said.

  “Yes. I wonder what’s gotten into her.”

  Harric stared at the barn where Molly was stabled alone and pondered Willard’s cryptic warning. She was in a mood? It must have something to do with him bleeding her again. Did it make her as agitated as it made Willard? Thinking back to the first time he bled her, it seemed likely, for immediately after the first cutting, she’d gone berserk on Lane.

  Great. So we’ll have two thundering rage monsters on hand whenever he bleeds her.

  The fog had swallowed Willard, but the click and squeak of his armor—eerily amplified by the fog—made it easy to track his path toward the top of the switchbacks.

  “He’s walking to the meadow,” said Caris. “I’ve never seen him walk anywhere, have you?”

  Harric shook his head. “Only to the privy.”

  She looked at Harric, her eyebrows risen. “You don’t think he let Abellia heal him, do you? What else could explain it? Even if Molly is unridable right now, what else would explain him walking instead of riding Snapper or Idgit?”

  Harric snorted. “Not Abellia’s magic.”

  “But she said she could reverse aging. I wonder if she did it for Willard. He might not even know it. Don’t you think he sounded a bit…louder and stronger just now?”

  “I don’t see Willard ever accepting magic,” said Harric. “Ever.” He found it strange at first that she hadn’t considered that Willard might have taken the Blood, but it wasn’t his place to enlighten her, so he said nothing.

  Caris stared into the fog in the direction of the squeaking armor. “I’ll ask Abellia later. She’ll tell me.”

  *

  Mistress Abellia watched from her window as Caris left the tower with an axe in each hand and trotted into the fog for the head of the switchbacks. Harric emerged from the barn, watching her go. He led the smallest horse by its reins—the Kwendi’s horse, she thought—and tied it to the post outside the door. Abellia smiled to see the animal was no longer favoring its back left hoof. Not wishing to raise Sir Willard’s suspicions, she’d waited till everyone slept before making the painful journey down the tower stairs to the stable and healing the poor beast.

  Of course, Willard had warned her directly against using magic, especially around Harric. And, of course, she’d nodded and smiled in reply. But she was sworn to heal, and if the old man didn’t like it, he could heal the next one with his people’s barbaric blood-lettings or mud-and-leaf plasters.

  She snorted.

  What preposterous people, Arkendians. She’d seen their “healing” before: smashed leaves smeared in wounds. Poison dripped in mouths. Broken limbs lashed to planks. It wasn’t healing, it was torture. They had no understanding of the Bright Mother: no Mending, Preserving, Cleansing, Divining, nor Wards. In Iberg lands, blindness and deafness and lameness were unknown; in Arkendia, they were as abundant as blackberries and viewed simply as “incurable” or “bad luck.”

  If only they could see the lowest beggar in Samis. How they would flock to the Mother.

  Yet the old knight forbade it—insisted this barbaric lack of magic made his people strong.

  She tapped her nexus stone with a brittle nail. There was a brutal sense to that line of thinking, of course; those who survived the twin dangers of injury and “healers” would be naturally tougher than any Iberg she’d known.

  Her nexus pulsed, bright and hot in her hands, startling her from meditation. Someone had located her stone with a Searching. A strong one. The stone pulsed again, growing brighter, and sent out a pulse of her own to help the searcher, and called Mudruffle from the adjoining room.

  As Mudruffle approached, her nexus erupted with the blinding internal light of a Sending.

  The old woman’s heart fluttered against her breastbone. A Sending like that could only come from the Moon itself. This meant they would acknowledge her service and reward her with health. Now, after a lifetime of healing others, they would allow her to mend her own aged body, and she would go with Mudruffle to the Kwendi lands.

  Her breaths grew short and rapid with excitement.

  “A Light Bringer,” Mudruffle honked.

  Abellia nodded. “Assuredly. See. Here is the sigil.” In the face of the nexus, a symbol had appeared, identifying the sender.

  “It is Morinster!” said Mudruffle.

  Abellia’s hand trembled. “Your beloved general, Mudruffle. I have never had the honor.”

  “It seems my message concerning the Kwendi has caught their attention, mistress.”

  She steadied her hand by clasping her nexus between both palms. Morinster might not authorize a full healing, but a partial restoration would be enough for her to make the journey. A partial restoration would be just. She mustn’t be greedy. She’d given her life freely in service, after all, with no expectation of reward.

  Her heart thumped wildly as echoes of old ambitions revived in her breast. To be noticed, in her eightieth year. For her sacrifices in this backward land to bear fruit. The rest she scarcely allowed herself to acknowledge in the secrecy of her heart. To have second life. To have a chance at truly living.

  The sigil in the nexus vanished, warning of the impending Sending.

  A Sending of this distance was a phenomenal act. She had never witnessed such a feat, even in the Bi-lunar Council. She found her palms sweating as Mudruffle closed the shutters to the windows. Why was she so frightened? Wasn’t this what every magus wanted, to be noticed by the moon itself? Direct contact with the source, without the knowledge of the council? But the presence of the eternal was itself terrifying. She had only just recovered from the previous night’s encounter with Vella.

  “Mistress, the tower door is locked,” Mudruffle honked as he closed the last shutter. He stood rigid beside her.

  The air in the center of the room began to shimmer, faintly at first, like a glimmer of sunlight in windborne crystals of frost. Then the glimmer exploded into blinding white light. This was nothing like the warmly golden effulgence of Vella. This was stark and hard and absolute, scouring the room with uncompromising purity.

  An apparition rose through the floor—or rather, the head and shoulders rose; the top of a colossus was too large for the room, its feet in the cellar. Abellia struggled to make sense of what she saw; one moment her mind would latch on to something familiar to give it reference—a plate of sun-bright armor, eyes like cutting diamonds—and next she’d see the plates as scales of some bright serpent, or the eyes as multitudes unwinking. And when she saw the wings—great spans of light, transecting floor and ceiling—they refracted into more wings than she could count, at angles that seemed impossible.

  Vertigo seized her and she grabbed the table for balance. She could not look away.

  The being scanned the tower, crystal gaze passing through Abellia to fix upon Mudruffle. Had it rested its gaze upon her, she doubted she could have remained standing. Such eyes! Such power and understanding! This was a presence that buttressed the very fabric of existence, dwarfing mortal spheres as mountains dwarfed and gave shape to valleys.

  There were no words; the eyes said everything.

  Mudruffle shook with ecstasy as Morinster communed with him, and Abellia watched, petrified. The Light Bringer shared none of his instructions with her. She was so near, however, that she felt the tone of its thoughts to Mudruffle. She sensed its approval. She sensed warning and commands.

  Mudruffle made a small bow from the waist, his way of nodding. Surely those instructions would be engraved by those glittering eyes on his soul.

  A deep note sounded. The air, her flesh, the timbers beneath her vibrated—as if the stone ring of the tower were the bass pipe of some gigantic organ and she a mote of dust in its wind. It speaks! she realized. Then the kaleidoscope of wings collapsed around the eyes, like the fall of some crystal house, and the Light Bringer vanished.<
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  Darkness and silence descended like smothering smoke.

  Abellia sat hard and stared, unseeing, into the gloom.

  The Light Bringer had not come for her, but for Mudruffle. Indeed, it had not seemed to see her at all. She hadn’t registered in its gaze. And though she had heard no words, she knew it had not granted her request. Maybe never noticed the request at all.

  A hole seemed to open within her, and her soul drained from her into emptiness. Then shame filled the space left behind. If only she could become stone—unfeeling, unseeing—and stare like this forever. Were there not tales of maidens turned to stone by vengeful gods? Could the Morinster not grant her that much? She had dared hope; now let him smite her to stone as a warning to others.

  She collapsed at the table, smothering her face with her arms. The nexus dropped dully on the boards. Her existence, her life’s work, confirmed meaningless, beneath notice. Unworthy in the eyes of eternity. Her dreams mere delusion.

  Mudruffle remained still, as silent sobs racked her.

  Gradually, she became aware of the birdsong outside her window, and the smell of dried ale and the knight’s ragleaf on the table. Somewhere outside, a horse whinnied. When she recovered enough to speak, she lifted her head and wiped her tears. Mudruffle’s shining black eyes watched intently.

  “Morinster left me the words to summon his brethren,” said Mudruffle. “To summon a Light Bringer.”

  She looked up, confused, then hurt, then surprised at her own hurt. “I have never heard of such a thing, Mudruffle, in all my years.” Ugly emotions rose in her throat like bile. Anger. Jealousy. Emotions she could not recall feeling in many long years. Her lip began to curl, betraying her, and she hid her face in her hands.

  Mudruffle shifted on his clay feet. “It is the nature of the situation, not the servant, that merits it. I may only call it if the other moons interfere directly with our goal.”

  Our goal.

  Us.