The Justice in Revenge

by Ryan Van Loan

  “You wanted to fuck around with my brain? Let magic erase part of my mind without my consent?” I growled. “You, of all people?”

  “Gods, no,” Eld said quickly. “I was against it, but I was also desperate, Buc. You don’t know how bad off you were.”

  “No,” I agreed, “I don’t. Because you took that from me.”

  “You don’t want to remember,” Sin assured me. “I barely do and that’s enough to … Well, let’s just say without us, you would’ve driven yourself insane.”

  “C’mon.”

  “The danger of having one of the most powerful minds I’ve ever met,” Sin said, “is that when that mind is broken, the damage it’s capable of is equally great. You would have driven yourself insane,” he repeated flatly. He meant it, too.

  I looked at Eld, his blond hair free of its ponytail and fanning around his face. He looked like a man at the end of his tether, one blow away from falling down and never rising again. He met my eyes and nodded.

  “He’s right,” he whispered. “So I agreed.”

  “For a time, he did,” Sin said.

  “I made it about a fortnight,” Eld admitted. “You know I’m a terrible liar.”

  “You are.”

  He tugged at his grey jacket, all askew from the day we’d had. “I came clean and told you everything.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “It was a mistake.”

  “You relapsed hard,” Sin said, his voice gentle. “Nearly killed Marin when she tried to light your night lamp.”

  “And then killed her for good today,” I said mentally.

  “That wasn’t your fault,” Sin answered me in my head.

  “That convinced me Sin was right,” Eld said. “I had to keep my distance, though, because while you forgot everything, I did not. I really am a horrible liar,” he said with the ghost of a smile. He glanced past me. “I had to make some hard choices.”

  I followed his gaze to Govanti and swallowed. “Then why tell me now?”

  “Because,” he sighed, “trying to avert one mistake, I made another. I pushed you away, kept you at a distance so that you wouldn’t see the truth, but you’re no fool, Buc. You looked at the evidence that you could see and drew false conclusions.

  “You were like a loaded pistole and I pulled the hammer back and walked away, letting whoever wanted to use you pull the trigger.”

  “That’s not quite fair, either,” Sin said. “This was never a perfect fix from the start. You’re too damned smart, Buc. Your intelligence kept finding odd corners in your mind that didn’t make sense and tried to chase them down, forcing me to take … steps.”

  “Steps?” Eld and I both asked together.

  “Your lapses in memory,” Sin told me.

  “I’ve had entire days where I suddenly find myself somewhere with no recollection of how I got there,” I told Eld.

  “Uh, I sort of know that,” Eld said. “Sin told me a few times and I realized once or twice you’d spaced out.”

  “You acted like you had no fucking clue,” I growled.

  “I didn’t,” Sin said. “Sort of. I split myself into two. The part of me that knew the truth kept that walled away from you … and from the part of me I hid the truth from.”

  “I didn’t know that bit, Buc. This is what comes of magic,” Eld snapped. “There’s always a hook that’s waiting to be set. Always another facet that’s left unexplained.”

  “That’s what magic is, fool,” Sin snarled. “If you understood it, it wouldn’t be magic.”

  “Is that why you abandoned me? Was it really to protect me?” I asked, speaking so softly I could barely hear myself, but drawing their attention. “Or because of the magic in my veins? Magic I’ll never be rid of.”

  “N-no,” Eld said slowly, his hesitation revealing the lie. “At least not completely,” he amended. “I knew, shortly after the island, what had happened. I didn’t realize it was possible for a Sin Eater to not pledge themselves to Ciris but I knew you were, for all intents and purposes, one of them. But, Buc,” he rushed on, “I kept my distance because … because I had feelings for you; feelings I thought would ruin our friendship and then the accident happened and there were too many lies and I couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “So you abandoned me.”

  “I gave you space to—”

  “Suffer on my own,” I said, tears filling my eyes. Feelings for me? It was what I’d fantasized hearing Eld say, but now it felt like another blade put through me. “To wonder why my best friend no longer talked to me, why he seemed oblivious to my advances, why I wasn’t good enough for him.”

  “Not good enough for me?” Eld’s eyes widened. “Buc, I’m the one who has always had to fight to be good enough for you.”

  “You say that and you say you had feelings for me, but you let magic wipe my memory, you let Sin convince you that you couldn’t talk to me about it.” The words left my lips before I could fully consider them, but they startled Sin. He shifted in my mind and several things fell into place. Later. “You lied to me about everything.”

  “I was trying to do what was right! Did you tell me about Sin?” He shook his head. “Did you tell me that you loved me? Do you even know what love is? You want me to say I fucked up?” Eld stood up so fast he knocked his chair over. “I fucked up. My only defense is I was trying to find my new place in all of this. I was trying to save you, Buc.”

  He spread his arms wide. “I didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know if staying close would destroy your mind or if you were even still you. Didn’t know why you wouldn’t tell me the Chair was moving to have you sent away or kicked out of the Company. Didn’t know—still don’t know—how you feel about me.”

  “You’re going to blame me when you helped erase my memories? Hid the truth from me?” I felt physically on fire from all the emotions swirling within me. Guilt from forgetting about Govanti, about Marin, and now that factory. Anger, no, rage at what I’d done and had no way to fix because that knowledge had been taken from me. I’d fucked up on an epic scale, but so had Eld. So had Sin. We all had, but I was the only one who had been clueless about it all. Pain was the greywash to the rainbow of emotions cascading through me. I tapped my temple. “You knew I wasn’t playing with a full deck. Is that my fault or yours?”

  Eld’s face went full white.

  “Tell me this,” I said after a moment, my voice tight, “why should this be so damned hard? Why should I have to flirt endlessly with you, wear a ball gown and throw myself at you, do all of that just to get you to realize that I want something more than friendship? Why couldn’t you have trusted us instead of Sin? Why couldn’t you have come clean with all of it? Your feelings, my situation, laid it all bare and trusted the pair of us to deal with it?”

  “I could have left,” Eld said. He made a noise in the back of his throat. “I thought I was doing the right thing,” he said, choking back tears.

  “So did I,” I whispered. But I was wrong. About everything.

  “I guess we have that in common, then.” He bent toward Govanti’s body and I cleared my throat.

  “I told you once that there were only two people in this world who I trusted. Who’d never betray me,” I said, and my words stopped him in his tracks. “Two. Sister and you. She’s dead. What’s your excuse?” His shoulders stiffened and I pointed toward the door. “I don’t need you, Eld. Turns out, I never did.”

  “Buc—you don’t mean that.”

  “I guess I should thank you for showing me that truth at least.” Eld’s face crumpled and something within me did, too, but I kept it from touching my face. I’d been terrified of losing control, of Sin winning out. That fear had tempered over time, when I came out on top and kept him from completing the Rite of Possession. I’d been so concentrated on that frontal assault, I didn’t notice when he slipped in through a side gate, one left unlocked by my best friend.

  “You betrayed me, Eld,” I said quietly, steeling myself for what I knew had to be done. “When I needed y
ou most.” There’s only one way to deal with traitors. “Get out.”

  He studied me for a long moment, eyes leaking tears, then nodded and muttered something under his breath. He turned slowly and walked blindly, like an old man, stumbling toward the door. He paused in the entryway, a score of paces away, but he might as well have been on another island.

  I cut him off with a sharp gesture.

  “Leave!”

  The door closing behind him sounded like the lid of a coffin.

  51

  “I can’t believe he left,” Sin whispered.

  “Yes, you can.” I wiped at my eyes, expecting to find tears, but they were dry, burned away by my anger. What had Eld said about me? “Taking advantage of situations, allowing them to play out for my benefit?” I took a deep breath. “That goes doubly for you, Sin.”

  “Buc, I tried to save you!”

  “For yourself.” I sat down in the chair Eld had been in a few moments before, felt the heat from his body, and sucked the pain in deep, to where my anger lay waiting to burn it clean. “Don’t try to deny it. You slipped, during all that back-and-forth. Let me see your true aim. You actively encouraged all of this,” I said.

  “Buc, you’re upset, I completely understand, I’m upset! But—”

  “Stop using my voice,” I growled. “You don’t get to do that anymore,” I told him mentally. “I forbid it.”

  “That’s fair,” Sin said, in my mind this time. “Ordinarily, without Ciris’s touch, I wouldn’t be able to, but the injury to your head left an opening.”

  “That you exploited. You want me to trust you?” I asked him. “Then fix the opening.”

  “I—I can’t, Buc. With Her, it may be possible, but without … you and I, we’re damaged in ways that I’ve never seen happen before. It’s what allowed you to block me out the other day.”

  “For weeks you’ve left me alone about completing the Rite of Possession.” I slapped the table. “I should have known there was something off there. You told Eld to avoid me, especially after I relapsed. Without Eld, the only one I could really rely on was you,” I said, speaking slowly so Sin could see and feel everything I was going through.

  “I suspect that at first, in the wake of the fire, Eld wouldn’t leave my side.” I didn’t wait for Sin’s nod of confirmation, just went on. “But I can’t remember anything, now that I think on it, for a span of time back then.”

  “You were woozy. Brain injuries take time.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe you waited for me to relapse, trusting to Eld’s nature.” I snorted. “Maybe you even stopped healing me so it would happen. Then you could force Eld away, so that the space between us would turn into a chasm.”

  My memories picked up with Eld already at a distance, one I didn’t understand—save that I knew of his distrust of magic and assumed he did not like the new, magical me. Sin could have stopped that with a single word, but he’d let the divide grow, steered me down false paths to solutions that had no bearing on the actual problem. In fact, his suggestions had only made things worse. And then—the gaps in my memory … It was only a matter of time before that reached a tipping point.

  “You were herding me like a school of fish.” I shook my head, felt my braids smack my shaved sides. “No, that’s too nice. You herded me like a fucking cow. Toward the one thing you’ve always wanted: Possession. Make me desperate, alone, backed into a corner, and see if I would break?”

  “Have you ever considered that I didn’t have a choice?” he asked, his voice barely an echo.

  “Of course you had a fucking choice.”

  “I’m a shard of Ciris herself. Do you think she’d create shards that could do as they pleased?” He chuckled, but there was no humor in my mind. “It doesn’t mean I didn’t try to heal you: you’re my host, I am loyal. You think I haven’t wondered why it should be this hard? I’ve felt everything you’ve felt, Buc. I don’t want this!”

  “What do you want?”

  “I don’t know,” he said after a long pause. “I know what I’m supposed to want, but you make everything so damned difficult, Buc. You’ve even made me question Her.”

  “At the end of it all, though, you’re still Hers, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “I’m yours, Buc, but I’m loyal to Ciris. I have to be.”

  “And with that convenient hole in my defenses, you may not be able to Possess me fully, but good as, right?”

  “I’ve never taken control of you save with Eld,” he protested.

  “I could almost forgive you for trying to return to your Goddess. It was clever of you to leverage the situation. It nearly worked.”

  Sin snorted. “You’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever met. It wouldn’t have worked.”

  “It wouldn’t have,” I admitted, “unless it could have saved Eld and me. I’d have done anything, risked anything for that. That was my weakness, the noose you slipped around my neck and pulled tight by degrees, so I didn’t notice even as I choked.”

  “Buc, you’re pissed. I get it. But see reason,” he said. “There’s no way you can do everything you want to do on your own. Fight Sicarii. Win the Doga’s support. Bend the Company under your thumb. Her name, first we have to figure out a way to keep your sanity now that your memories are back. You need me!” He sighed. “We’ll get through this. Together.”

  “I know my weakness,” I said, ignoring him. “I’ve known it for a while now. Do you know yours?”

  “Mine?” I could hear the confusion there. “What are you talking ab—No!”

  “Aye,” I whispered, channeling all the pain and anger and fear that had been lurking inside me into action. I pulled it all together, into an impossibly large hammer, and I smashed Sin with it. He crumpled within my mind, his denial still echoing loudly. I changed the hammer into an iron sack and felt it flow over him, sucking him into a void within my mind from which he could not return unless I willed it.

  His wail vanished sharply, as if his throat had been cut.

  “Your mistake was taking Eld away from me,” I told the void in my mind. “Mine was in ever letting you think you could do it.” I sank down in the chair, the weight of everything threatening to collapse me the way it’d crushed Sin a moment before. “Now we’re both fucked.”

  Free from Sin’s focusing restraint and completely clean of kan, my mind ran at a breakneck pace, considering a thousand upon a thousand possibilities What I’d learned of Sicarii. The Artificer. Marin. Eld. Eld. Tears burst from my eyes and I couldn’t hold back a sob. I lost you. I knew it was happening, I’d been fighting it for months, but I never truly believed it would happen. You betrayed me. Both of you. One inside, one out, working together, and me the court fool, thinking I was the one calling the tune.

  The factory. The children I’d sentenced to death in the name of profit and power. I hadn’t known they were using children because I’d never cared to find out. Means to ends. I could see how that knowledge would have poisoned my every thought in a maelstrom of guilt and despair. It hurt even now, in ways that I couldn’t quite grasp. I shivered at the thought of that awful fire and the flames that had wanted nothing more than to consume me and everything else in that factory. Worse were the tendrils of terror that latched onto me at the memory. It hurt, but—

  But taken with everything else, it was just one more painful rock in the cairn I’d built for myself. I could climb atop of it. Immolate myself and end it all. Save that would mean abandoning those same children to the other fires of this world. Trading companies, dogas, Gods. Thick clouds of smoke encircling them, suffocating them slowly until they died bent and broken before their time, having never seen the sun.

  “Fuck that.”

  I stood up, straightened my jacket, and limped over to Govanti to check his pulse. It was stronger, which I took to mean whatever toxin Sicarii had used wasn’t meant to kill. Very similar to the trap I’d laid for her that had caught Marin instead. I’d failed. At almost everything. I was broken, alone in ways I had
n’t been since this summer. No, since the day I tried to pick Eld’s pocket and found the man I’d come to love. And lose.

  That was all gone, now. Eld had been right. We made choices and sometimes there’s no coming back from them. That didn’t mean I could lie down and die. Sicarii and others—the Gods, the Doga, the Company, someone—had set me up, turned my trust into a dagger, and watched me plunge it into my own heart. Someone who knew about Eld. They needed to know that blades can cut both ways.

  Revenge.

  The pain was still there, but my new determination dulled some of it. I kept walking, my mind running on ahead. Sicarii had tried to kill me, was fighting to take the power of Servenza and likely the entire fucking Empire for her demented purpose, whatever it was. I thought of her falling before me and smiled. End Sicarii, and the Doga owes me.

  “No.”

  My voice sounded rough in my ears. My throat hurt. That kind of thinking—of sitting down at the table and playing the game with the players, hoping to play the best hand—had gotten me into this mess in the first place. I didn’t need to control the levers of power. I just needed to own the ones who did. The Doga had shown me that truth the day she summoned me: I’d been too enthralled with my own imagined brilliance.

  “But I see it now,” I said, opening the front door and looking at Marin’s lifeless body. “Too late to save you, girl.”

  I bent down and closed her eyes. “You and Zeno and Quenta and Govanti will be my minders, from now on. I won’t be blind again. You’ll be the last if I have anything to say about it.”

  I knew that wasn’t true—I wasn’t a God and even the Gods couldn’t prevent every death—but the sentiment was true. The pain cascading through me, the nausea, the wrenching tightness in my chest, the flaming brands in my brain: none of it was gone. But I could breathe. I could walk. I could fight. I could think. With all of that? I could win.

  “I promise,” I told Marin, rolling her over so I could pick her up. “I’ll give you what is owed.

  “Justice.”