by Jags, Chris
Niu seemed content to allow him to wallow in his insecurities. Since Hezben’s identification of the murderous soul possessing him, she’d been depressingly reserved in her interactions. No doubt she worried that some ill-considered remark might trigger a lethal reaction in Simon which would destroy the party. Unbeknownst to her, it was Simon’s increasing sense of isolation that was fraying his emotional stability. Even in his brightest moments he felt like a pariah; in his darkest, more akin to the ooze squelching beneath Oswald boots with every heavy step. Niu’s cool distance stung him terribly. He would have done anything for her; could she not spare some sympathy as a balm for his conflicted emotions?
He’d spent much of the night tossing and turning, sick with dread yet attempting to master his fears, with the result that he’d arisen both mentally and physically exhausted. The thought of accidentally harming Niu spearheaded his anxieties. Deep in the bubbling soup of raw feelings he was now trying desperately to repress, he knew he might love her. Having never been in love before he wasn’t absolutely sure, but her courage and resourcefulness – as inadequate as she occasionally made him feel - had long since won his heart. The mere sight of her could quicken his pulse: her expressive eyes, quirky smile; her lithe, sinuous movements.
He was quite sure she didn’t feel the same way about him. Pondering that made him nauseous, but he tried not to linger on the thought. The best way to keep his feelings in check was to concentrate on the practical. If he gave himself even an inch of emotional rope, allowing his thoughts to linger on Niu, his dead father, or the trail of destruction he’d wrought, he would surely hang himself - or more precisely, his friends and allies. Picturing the light leaving Niu’s bright gaze as she clutched accusingly at her chest made him ill, a gnawing sickness from which he strove to distract himself by counting his plodding footsteps.
At least finding a way through this sea of trees wasn’t on his growing list of woes. Hezben proved to be an invaluable guide. Even the densest and most tangled undergrowth parted for the leshy, who navigated the featureless forest with effortless ease. In an encounter which would have proved disastrous had he not been accompanying them, he drove off a slavering bull jaggermund with a volley of thorns and a flurry of whip-cracking vines. The woodlands answered his silent commands instantly and in implausible contradiction to their normal roles, leaving Simon in awe of the cranky sprite’s powers.
“He can’t do much outside of the forest, though,” Oswald confided from behind a meaty paw. “In town, or in the high mountains he’s as normal as you or me.”
Simon wasn’t feeling particularly normal, but he smiled weakly, at least until Hezben hissed, in a carrying whisper, “Do not be telling this scourge, this open wound, of my weaknesses.”
Oswald hung his head. “Sorry, Hez.”
“I’m not a scourge.” Simon, unable to muster a scathing or witty rejoinder, retorted. He felt like an emotional stewpot: bubbling with anger and chunks of fear; flavored with desolation. Frankly Hezben’s constant barrage of scathing judgments was only hastening the very meltdown the leshy claimed to hope to prevent.
“Indeed.” The leshy arched a mossy eyebrow and moved ahead, leaving Simon to seethe.
“I don’t think you’re a scourge,” Sasha told him solemnly. As ever, the bruxa didn’t betray the slightest hint of an expression, but Simon took heart in the fact that she wasn’t openly hostile. She moved briskly beside him, spattered in the faded remnants of yesterday’s victims.
“Thanks,” Simon muttered. “Look, about what I said, about you attaching yourself to us…”
Her eyes glittered. “You think me a parasite, too?”
“No, I…” Simon had no real idea what he thought of the bruxa. His opinions had been much more clearly defined before he’d discovered that he, too, was a monster. “Do you think your… mother… will send more hunters after you?”
Sasha nodded solemnly. “Yes. She did warn me never to try to sneak away again. She’ll have decided that I’m not worth the trouble I could bring down on her. Unless she’s certain I can’t be traced back to her, she’ll keep trying to destroy me. Next time, though…” Sasha’s brow creased even as her lips curled into the ghost of a smile. “You can bet it won’t be humans. I’m disappointed she thought those fools would be able to stop me.”
“What will she send?”
Peeling a strand of black hair back from her face, Sasha contemplated the sky for a moment. Slowly, she bared her teeth. “I suppose we’ll see.”
Shuddering, Simon drew his jacket closer.
“They’re afraid of you,” Sasha commented. “Niu and the others.”
Simon grimaced. “I know.”
“I’m not.”
“That’s because I can’t hurt you.”
“It’s because neither of us have a place in this world.” Sasha didn’t sound bitter, just pragmatic. “Not really.”
“It’s because I can’t stop your heart,” Simon reiterated irritably. He wasn’t ready to give up his place amongst humanity, not yet.
“If you want,” Sasha said nonchalantly, “I could kill you.”
Simon stared. “What?”
“You’re scared you’ll hurt Niu. I could kill you, then you couldn’t. Or…” she looked thoughtful, finger on lips. “I could kill her, before you could get to her…”
“No!” Simon yelled, drawing the attention of everyone in the group. “No one’s killing anyone!”
“What is going on?” Niu asked, her tone deceptively light.
“Nothing!” Simon snarled, fixing Sasha with what he hoped was a threatening gaze. “Nothing is going on. I was just having a… disagreement with Sasha.”
“About killing?” Niu remained calm and casual, but her eyes were dark with misgiving.
“What else would she talk about? It’s all she does,” Simon snarled with disgust. Splitting away from the group with a dismissive gesture, he stalked off into the trees.
“That’s not the way, young fellow!” Oswald called after him.
Like I care, Simon thought furiously. Why should it concern him if Niu got home? There was no version of her future into which he factored, unless he was standing over her body. She could no longer tolerate his company, that was plain. Let Oswald point her home. If Simon’s future was to have the living shrink in fear from him as though he were some leprous tumor - to be accepted only by the murderous undead - then he might as well cut his ties with humanity immediately. What did he have to lose? He’d already inadvertently killed his father. He might as well forfeit the girl he was coming to love as well.
Worse, his faith had been shaken. He’d grown to believe that Vanyon had been guiding his journey; that the Afterlord cared what befell him, that the gods might have some kind of destiny in mind for him. Disabused of that comforting notion, he was left conflicted as to whether to believe in the gods at all. Why would Lesquann create a world in which an abomination like the heartstopper could thrive? Why would Vanyon prevent the poor girl who had once been Sasha from entering his kingdom, allowing her to roam the mortal plane as a bloodsucking monstrosity? Tucked away in his peaceful, simple corner of the kingdom, his father and Brand’s priest informing his worldview, Simon had never stopped to consider the possibility that his deeply-held beliefs might be grounded more in hope than reality. He came to no conclusions as he tramped deeper into the green, but the comfort of unquestioning faith had fled his soul and the loss left him hollow.
Profoundly disheartened, Simon ignored the entreaties of his companions as they called after him. Niu’s voice was the only one which meant anything to him, and she was putting little effort into her attempts to turn his feet around; she called his name only once, and uncertainly.
“Let him cool off,” he heard Hezben loudly advise. “He’s a danger to everyone around him at present.”
Simon could happily have strangled the leshy with one of his own vines.
With no destination in mind, he brushed past dripping boughs and fer
ns, stumbling over roots and occasionally slipping where the moss gave way on slick rock. The taste of self-imposed exile roiled bitterly at the back of his mouth. He thought he might have emptied his lungs at the sky, had he not wished to preserve some illusion of cold dignity. No one followed him. He wasn’t sure if this was hurtful or a relief.
After some time of blind blundering, Simon’s left boot caught on an unseen snag, pitching him face first into the sodden moss. For a moment, he simply lay there, stunned and winded. Then the misery of the past few days caught up with him in a rush; his pent up fears and frustrations boiled up and spilled over. He wrenched his jaws wide and screamed.
Minutes passed as he alternated between beating the ground with bunched fists and flinging clumps of moss about like a spoiled child. When he’d exhausted himself – he felt a bit sheepish, but fractionally revived – he righted himself, deeply relieved that none of his erstwhile companions had witnessed the tantrum which would surely have killed them. Breathing deeply to calm himself, he wiped his eyes with the back of one filthy hand, straightened his jacket, and trudged onward, freshly numb. Behind him, one by one, a family of squirrels fell dead from a tree.
For the duration of his lonely sojourn, Simon thought of very little. An affliction which would force him to shun the company of others for all his days; his father; Niu; being a wanted, hunted man; he pushed all this into the depths of his mind. He only desired to be nothing, feel nothing at all. When he happened across an overhang of the type his childhood imagination might have conjectured some primordial troll to lurk beneath, he crawled underneath and huddled there, mentally fatigued.
Barely conscious of the passage of time, Simon wasn’t sure how long he’d been balled up in the shadowy dampness before hesitant footsteps squelching in his direction intruded themselves upon his attention. Warily, he looked up. That traveling cloak was very familiar to him, and despite himself Simon experienced a rush of warmth as Niu peeled back her hood, considered him for a moment, then dropped to her hands and knees to crawl under the overhang beside him.
She does care.
“So,” she said, sitting across from him so that the toes of their boots touched. “How is your exile going so far?”
“Don’t mock me,” Simon muttered, but he didn’t pull away. He craved her closeness.
Her mouth twitched into a furtive smile. “This is not necessary. You are welcome to come with me to Jynn.”
Unsure what to feel, Simon stared at her. “You would bring a killer into your homeland?”
Niu’s smile faded, but only slightly. “I am no angel myself. If I am recognized by the authorities, I am certain this time to be executed.”
“If you stay with me, you’re almost certain to die.”
Niu chuckled humorlessly. “Perhaps this is my fate. To be torn between certain deaths.”
Simon shook his head. “You don’t need to be. Flee to another kingdom. Verivista, maybe, or one of the other ones Oswald mentioned. Start fresh.”
Niu shuffled. “That would be an easier prospect with a trusted friend at my side.”
Simon’s heart bloomed with hope, but he kept it from his voice. “Sasha?”
She kicked him. “Do not be ridiculous. I pity Sasha, but she is a monster.”
“Like me.”
“Not like you. She is literally a monster.”
Simon hugged himself. “If I were to go with you… to Verivista, Jynn, wherever, I could only bring misery.”
Niu didn’t outright deny this. “It is possible. But I think you could learn to control your emotions.”
A thick ball of sudden sorrow closed Simon’s throat. “Perhaps I could. But having no strong emotions…” He spread his hands. “That would mean I would have to abandon…” Any hope of love.
Niu considered him wisely. She nudged him companionably with her knee. “Yes. You would have to make certain sacrifices.”
“Would it…” Simon could barely choke the words out. “Would it be a sacrifice for you, as well?”
Tilting her head, Niu studied him sadly. “Oh, Simon,” was all she said.
It’s not me she wants, Simon thought bitterly. It was never me, and it never can be. It was this Cihau, this damn street entertainer, whose memory she clung to. How could Simon compete with a ghost?
“Whatever we do,” she said at length, “We should do it together.”
Swallowing the sour taste in his mouth, Simon nodded. Niu made to stand; impulsively, he reached for her.
“Niu,” he managed, his voice hoarse. She returned his gaze with a wary smile, and he understood instinctively that she knew and dreaded what he was about to say. He said it anyway. “I love you.”
Averting her eyes, she cleared her throat.
“No,” she said softly, uncomfortably. “You do not.”
Simon wasn’t about to be told how he felt. “I do,” he insisted earnestly.
“Simon, you do not,” she repeated more forcefully. “Love is a powerful, passionate emotion. If love was what you felt for me, I would already be dead.”
With that, she scrambled out into the embrace of the forest. Stunned, Simon watched her retreating form until the trees swallowed it. Burying his face into his knees, he allowed one final tear to dampen the fabric. Then, fighting the sudden heaviness in his limbs, he wearily pulled himself to his feet and followed her.
XIV
The road to Sallinger was aggravatingly, unnecessarily serpentine, but at least the recent rains kept dust from kicking up. Tiera rode alongside her masked and hooded brother with a small company of guards. These men had no idea as to Merequio’s identity, but repressed their curiosity and suspicion out of fear of triggering the princess’ wrath. Tiera had handpicked young soldiers and an abrasive junior officer named Thornton to be her escort. In the short term, these men were unlikely to ask questions. Thornton in particular was blinkered by the hopes of potential promotion. By the time he and the others understood that they’d helped their patricidal mistress escape justice, she would have crossed the border into Verivista.
As to what she and her undead brother hoped to accomplish once they’d escaped into the neighboring kingdom was not a puzzle Tiera had yet managed to solve. She had no intention of hiding herself away indefinitely, nor of taking a disguise and assimilating herself into the common masses. She was accustomed to a certain quality of life and had no intention of sacrificing it entirely. Yet any hope she had of somehow twisting her father’s death to her immediate benefit had been destroyed by her instinctive flight from the capital.
Might it have been wiser to have remained and found some way to blame her father’s death on assassins or illness? The question haunted her, but panic had clouded her judgment and the damage was now done. Surely she could have twisted the circumstances of his death to her benefit? There was no physical proof that she’d killed him, after all, and in her moments of deepest anxiety she doubted Merequio’s assertions that she was responsible for what had befallen him. Where could such power have come from? She’d experimented once or twice on the road, willing Lieutenant Thornton or one of his subordinates dead, and nothing had come of it, not so much as a twitch or gasp. Perhaps her vampire brother had drained King Minus and his men of life himself, yet placed the burden on Tiera’s shoulders for his own enigmatic reasons.
In her darker moments, she wondered whether she should have ordered Merequio arrested and destroyed. There would have been no difficulty blaming her father’s death on a creature such as that which her brother had become. In her heart, however, she knew she would never have been able to go through with it. This was Merequio after all, her only surviving blood and, more importantly, the only person she’d ever given a damn about. She would not betray him.
Still, as she was jostled about on the back of a huge piebald courser meant for a knight – Tiera hating riding and horses and owned none of her own - she cursed herself viciously. Flight had not been her best option. Merequio had talked her into it. The vampire had couns
eled – reasonably, it had seemed while Tiera’s thoughts had been stampeding about like a herd of panicked jackalopes – that the nobles would blame her for the incident, pouncing upon the opportunity to order her execution so that they could squabble over the throne. Best to flee the country, he’d said, and build a power base from which to retake it.
That advice had seemed good at the time, but Tiera had been flustered and unable to consider her situation in cold blood. Now that she was on the road, riding for a foreign kingdom which was unlikely to embrace her with open arms, much less assist with her ambitions, she wondered if she shouldn’t have remained at home and attempted to paint herself as an innocent victim in her father’s demise. A bit of wailing and hair-tearing might have convinced all but the most skeptical members of the court that she’d been the hapless dupe of some plot against her family – as indeed, she might well have been. She still wasn’t convinced that Merequio hadn’t manipulated her to his own ends.
Had he ‘survived’, Merequio would have inherited the throne, Tiera reminded herself. He would have been first in line, and without the baggage of this marriage charade that I got saddled with. He has to be bitter about that. If I flee the country, I will have proven my guilt beyond doubt to the nobility, after which my brother can take the throne for himself. Nobody has yet seen his face, not even Thornton. It would be easy enough for him to stage a miraculous return from the dead and claim his birthright. He just has to get me out of the way, and perhaps he has fond enough memories of me to be averse to killing me outright.
Or perhaps, she amended, struck by a new thought, perhaps he’s afraid of me. He had, after all, expressed admiration upon discovering her newfound abilities. Did that approval mask a deeper layer of fear?