People had been asking Malick that question a lot lately. Fen hadn't emerged from their room or let anyone in but Malick since the other night. Malick had managed a little hope this afternoon when Fen actually got dressed and made vague noises about joining them for tea, but he'd never shown up. They were all starting to worry.
"He'll be all right. We'll all be all right. You have to trust me, love—I know what I'm doing, all right?” Malick gripped Shig's shoulder and gave her a gentle shake. “I wouldn't take chances. Not with this. Not with any of you."
Well....
No, all right, not even with Joori. Fen would kill him.
Shig bobbed a heavy nod and pushed out a long sigh. “Yeah,” she said and peered up at Malick out the corner of her eye. “Yeah, fine. Just... you have to make sure he comes back, is all.” She snorted; a dry, somewhat sad thing. “And you should probably watch your own back too. It'd kinda suck if he killed you now."
And just like that, they were all right again.
Malick gave Shig a smirk, and then, because he couldn't help himself and he adored her, he swooped her into a hug, said, “It'll work out, I promise,” into her hair and then he set her down. He kept the smile until he was out her door and through his own. Until he looked automatically at the bed, and found Fen still there, right where Malick had left him after allowing himself to be dragged into another bout of fuck-me-until-I-can't-think-anymore when he'd come back from arguing with Joori. Malick had obliged. Malick always obliged. He couldn't help himself.
It's your job, Kamen. By all means, you should do it.
Malick strangled the growl.
"H'llo, love,” he said. He wasn't expecting an answer, and he didn't get one. Fen actually scowled at him, though, met his eyes, so Malick took it as progress.
He didn't exactly ignore Fen as he made his preparations for tonight's business; he just tried not to feel the intensity of the stare. Fen was silent still, closed off, only acknowledging Malick enough to glare at him once in a while. He hadn't come to tea or supper, but he'd apparently eaten, at least; the bowl Malick had left on the cupboard beside the bed was empty. Definitely progress. Now, with a wary look at Malick as Malick started pulling on his mail vest and digging out his leathers, Fen limped from the sheets long enough to wash and sneer at his own reflection in the brass plate above the press for a while.
The scars seemed to fascinate him these days, like he'd never noticed them before. Malick had himself a good look, too, but likely for different reasons than Fen was looking. All that bare skin—Malick kind of had to look, he couldn't help it. Heavy, silver-white bands on thigh and upper-arm, and streaks of puckered rose and almost-pearl on back and chest. The lumpy twist of muscle and missing muscle on the back of Fen's calf that left him with what was looking to be a permanent limp as legacy; the twisted divots on his forearm—both acquired from a pack of maijin pretending at wolf. As always, Malick's gaze found and caught on the scar set just beneath Fen's breastbone, the one Malick had given him. The one Fen had given himself when he'd gotten in the way of Malick's sword. Saved his soul.
Still redder and fresher than all the others. Still looking like it might open up again if given the wrong jostle. Still just as raw as Fen was.
Fen had himself a good, long look, plainly not seeing the beauty of it all like Malick was, the tale of endurance and unwilling survival it told. Fen merely sneered again then limped back and burrowed back into bed. Clearly intent on staying there for a while longer.
Malick couldn't help the frown, the ripple of disappointment that stuttered in his chest at the closed-off demeanor and the continued hush. But once he dragged his weapons out of the chest and carelessly flicked the key to the bed, he noticed something else creeping beneath the silence. He just wasn't sure what it was yet. Fen merely cut the key a glance and then pointedly pretended he hadn't.
Give him a target. That was the intention, anyway. And if Malick worked this situation just right, however tonight ended, he'd have a better measure of Fen's equilibrium than Fen did. Which wasn't exactly a new thing, but at least this time it would be useful.
"Banpair,” Malick explained, though Fen hadn't asked, “are....” He paused. He'd almost said “vermin” but it wasn't exactly true. “They're godless maijin. Xari was... you remember Xari, right?” Malick waited for Fen to nod, as much to see if Fen would as to check to see if he actually did remember. Malick still didn't know how much of his surroundings Fen had been taking in back then, between the time Subie had eaten itself and the moment he'd more or less come back to himself in the middle of the ocean on the way to Tambalon.
Fen did nod; Malick tried not to grin smugly. If Fen was still
in his I-don't-want-to-think-about-it-and-you-can't-make-me mindset, Malick would've gotten nothing more than a blank stare, or a fuck-me-now look, and he wasn't up to forcing another subject just yet. Fen could be damned immovable sometimes, and right now, he was just too... brittle.
"Xari was banpair. She'd lost the favor of her god when she....” Malick trailed off again, and covered the pause by pretending his sword belt was giving him trouble. This might get sticky. Then again, it might not. You just never knew with Fen these days. Malick cut a quick look to where Fen lay on his side on the bed, his head propped up on his hand, watching Malick with... it looked like grudging interest. Malick was pretty sure it was interest. It was grudging something, anyway. “Xari had seen that Asai would betray Skel. She'd read it in Skel's cards. She didn't know how, and she didn't guess about the amulets. She did try to stop him, or at least she says so, but she kept the knowledge from Dragon. I can't say if Dragon would have done anything about it, but she did not appreciate the oversight."
Malick was watching Fen closely, not even trying to pretend he wasn't. Fen would know anyway. He seemed to be used to it.
Fen was silent for a long moment, just watching Malick fiddle with the belt's buckle until Malick finally gave it up for too obvious and slipped it home. Malick had looped the garrote around his forearm and pulled his sleeve over it before Fen finally ventured, “So, these banpair—they've all done something to piss off their gods. They've been stripped of their powers, and you're meant to hunt them?” He paused, peering down at his fingers on the linens for a long moment before lifting a hooded gaze back up to Malick. “Don't you ever get tired of doing Wolf's wet work for him?"
Words. Actual words. Put together into cohesive sentences. Thank all the gods. Malick was so pleased that he completely ignored the inherent insult.
"It's a purpose, Fen."
And we both know you've been flailing around, waiting to figure out your own. You've got one now. All you have to do is choose what you want to do with it.
Easier said than done, but then that could be said for everything about Fen. He had far more needs than wants. Mostly because he didn't dare to admit that he wanted at all. The man had made denial an actual art form. Drunks and poppy addicts the world over could build monuments to Fen's capacity for self-delusion.
A faint smile ticced at the corner of Malick's mouth as he made a show of looking for his boot knife. Actual conversation with Fen was a thing to savor—at least the ones where Fen was a willing participant—and the fact that Fen was participating now, after everything.... Malick was beginning to think he might be able to nudge this one where he needed it to go, without actually pushing this time. He didn't want to get dressed too quickly and make the fact that they were verging on an actual dialogue too obvious, or Fen might shut down again.
"Anyway, they're not really stripped of their powers,” Malick said, rooting around through the clutter on top of the press, where he knew bloody well the knife wasn't. “They're not defenseless, so don't look at me like it's not a fair fight or something. Stripped of their god's blessing, which means they can't get power from their god. They can, however, sort of absorb it from the energies around them."
He stopped there, busying himself with his pseudo-search, and waiting. It could end here, which woul
d mean Malick had said the wrong thing somewhere back there and Fen was retreating again, or Fen would ask another question, and Malick could acknowledge another tiny step forward. With any luck, Malick would have a better idea about Fen's state of mind by the end of this... was it a conversation? Maybe not yet. Malick liked to think it might get there, though. Because this was an opportunity he couldn't let slip past, and he'd told Shig only bald truth about his intentions—putting Fen into a position where he had to fight to survive should very handily answer the question as to whether or not he would. And better to do it while Malick would be there, watching.
Tell him what you must, give him what you must....
Yeah. Fuck you, Imara.
"Meaning?” Fen finally asked.
Malick very nearly didn't control the sigh. Fen was interested. Fen was participating. Fen was instigating. Which should be a good thing. Except that it made Malick feel like complete and utter shit. And yet he was still doing it, wasn't he?
He really hated being a minion sometimes.
If you'd like to maintain your hold on him....
Have I said “fuck you"?
"Meaning,” Malick said, “that they sort of live off of the passions of others.” He gave up pretending to look for the knife. With a shrug, he turned to face Fen and leaned back into the cupboard. “Mostly mortals,” he went on, “because mortals actually have passion. And the strongest are those that are the baser emotions. Anger, hatred, fear, and so on. You've got love, of course, which is also fairly strong, but it's one of those things that flares very brightly at the beginning and then settles down to a slow, steady flame. Well, if it lasts."
"And the others don't?"
Bloody damn, Fen looked so good like that, tangled in messy linens with the lamplight scudding over the angles of his face, the dark, wispy growth on chin and upper-lip accentuating the sharpness of his features. Wrinkled sheets with those pretty bare feet poking out the ends, chiseled bare chest with its intriguing map of scars, and dark silky hair slightly mussed, the perpetual raggedy fringe only obscuring the prickly gray gaze enough to make it look sexy and not contrived. And that voice. Malick would never say so, because the circumstances that had wrought it had been... rather terrible, but Fen's rough-raspy voice really did things for him. Really did things for him. It kind of made up for the missing braid. Which he also wouldn't say out loud.
Malick cleared his throat. “Others?"
"The other passions."
"Oh."
Right. There'd been a kind-of-conversation going on a few seconds ago. Sort of funny that Malick was the one who'd lost the thread this time and not Fen.
"For the most part, no, not when you think about it. Anger, sure, when it's over something one can't necessarily fix right away.” Damn. He probably shouldn't have started with that one. Fen, after all, would know all about that, and Malick didn't necessarily want to remind him. He decided to skip right over hatred. “Fear is the easiest, though, which is where the problem comes in. Because it's the easiest emotion to create, y'see."
Fen's eyebrows went up a little at that. “My f-father....” The hesitation was minute, but there. “My father used to tell of flesh-eating maijin. He called them banpair."
Malick almost smiled. He'd heard the epithet before—he'd used it once or twice—and it always amused him. “Not really. Metaphorically, maybe. Generally speaking, banpair are simply maijin who've fucked up, but not enough to be sent to the suns. They've been rejected by their god, but that doesn't preclude the possibility that another god will take them, or even that their own will take them back, if they somehow manage to impress. But they have to work at it."
He hesitated. He'd almost used Xari as an example of how banpair could earn themselves a place again, but decided that would be pushing things. Malick didn't think Fen held Xari in much esteem.
"Absorbing the energies from the emotions of others isn't really forbidden, merely frowned upon, and you can't really blame someone for surviving in the only way available to them. It's harmless, really. Someone who's doing it merely to survive and maintain the strength to do the work of the gods takes only what they need, and the person they're taking from doesn't even know it. They sort of... slurp up the overflow. The problems begin when they start to... I guess the best word for it would be to ‘steal’ those passions. Create them so that they can be absorbed.” Actually, the real problem was that the rush was more addictive than poppy, or so Malick had heard. “It's always been a danger, but the instances down the centuries have been few and isolated, because once you start crossing the line, your chances of finding a god who will take you are almost nothing."
Again, Fen's eyebrows went up a little. “You're arming yourself pretty heavily."
"Because it's not isolated this time. There are twenty-three banpair in the world. An even dozen of those are unaccounted for. They've somehow slipped even the sight of the gods. And no one can find the spirits of those they've killed, either. It's... worrying. And they're getting bolder and stronger."
"So you're killing them."
"Sending them to spirit,” Malick corrected. “If I can find them.” Once they were sent to spirit, the gods could lay hands on them. What happened after that was not Malick's concern. He waved a hand. “I'm thinking it's going to be more like wandering about the seedier places and nulling out any magic I can reach, hoping I can take away whatever they're using as a veil and find them that way. Kind of a blunt, blundering approach, but no other Temshiel or maijin thus far has been able to find them."
Which made the fact that Malick would be rather pissing off the other Temshiel and maijin who happened to be within his range when he was looking somewhat satisfying. Having one's power suddenly cut off, regardless of what one might be up to at the time, had to be a bit annoying, he had to admit. Their own fault, as far as he was concerned. If they'd managed to get this under control when they'd realized it was a problem, he could have been concentrating exclusively on Fen right now.
"Seedier places,” Fen said softly, thoughtful, his gaze wandering again to the key then darting away. “Is it... dangerous?"
Aw, baby, are you worried about me?
Malick didn't ask it. Nor did he take it lightly. Not from someone who'd had too much taken from him, and was so deathly afraid of losing what he had left. Fen spent more time talking to the dead than the living these days.
Maybe getting him out and onto a job would keep his mind from eating itself the way it had been doing. Too much damned room in there these days, and Fen just kept filling up the empty spaces with nonexistent ghosts who kept telling him he wasn't worth the effort when Malick wasn't poking and prodding at him. One way or another, getting Fen to come with him would accomplish something. Malick would figure out exactly what as he went along.
It's your job, he reminded himself. And no one else could do this particular job like Malick could. No one else would have lasted this long without Fen putting a knife through them, at the very least. And certainly no one else could be as motivated.
"Not for me,” was all Malick said, which was mostly true.
"Hmm,” Fen replied then went silent.
Silent but not withdrawn, not shut down, so Malick didn't move yet. Malick didn't have the same need Joori or Shig had to try to pry Fen open and get him to vomit up his pain and misery so they could pick through it all, looking for... whatever. Hope, in Joori's case; Malick didn't think he wanted to know what Shig was looking for. Not that Fen would cooperate. That was what the shutting down was for. Malick had seen Fen do it in the middle of a sentence, just abruptly cut off whatever he was saying and swallow it, and then just not say anything more. Or maybe get up in the middle of a one-sided “conversation” and walk away before the other person was finished talking. Usually Joori or Shig. They took it as a further sign of Fen's fragility; Malick took it as Fen expressing his preferences.
"Samin's volunteered to come with me,” Malick put in, and then he dropped it.
A sideways
invitation, and Fen would take it or he wouldn't. Probably wouldn't, but Malick had to try. Fen had found balance and purpose before through justice delivered at the ends of his knives; Malick saw no reason why Fen couldn't use it as a crutch now, a way to find the focus he needed so badly until he was ready to take on the purpose Wolf had handed him.
So Malick waited to see what Fen would do, hoping without much real hope. Fen was apparently deep inside himself again—who knew if Fen was even aware that Malick was still here?—and the night was moving on. Malick needed to collect Samin and get going. With a sigh, he pulled himself upright and snagged his boot knife from the top of the bag, the contents of which he'd been moving about while pretending to look for it, and started for the door.
"Don't wait up,” he said. Not that Fen would, but Malick liked to think he might at least think about it.
"Malick,” Fen said quietly.
Malick turned with his hand on the door and peered at Fen over his shoulder. Stilled.
Fen held the key between his fingers, watching the light shine and shift over it as he turned it. Idly, his fingertips traced the tiny braid that wove the hair back from his left temple as he stared at the key. Contemplative. Maybe even a little bit wistful.
His gaze lifted, held Malick's for a long, pregnant moment, unreadable, then abruptly dropped. He closed the key in a loose fist.
"Just you and Samin?"
It could mean anything, so Malick didn't allow it to trip up the rhythm of his heart yet. “Yeah. Shig was never very good with weapons.” And now that her magic was gone, she seemed to have no interest in changing that. Or maybe since Yori was gone.
Fen accepted this with a distracted nod. He was silent for another long moment, contemplating his closed fist. Malick merely waited. He could be patient, when he needed to be. When it was important. Fen seemed lost in his Fen-thoughts for a while longer, then:
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