Elene couldn’t breathe. Kylar hadn’t only left her; he’d taken Uly. The rejection was complete. Things had seemed to be going so well.
No, things had been going so well. Elene couldn’t believe it, wouldn’t believe it. She scoured the kitchen for some sign. She found a stain on the floorboards, dark against dark wood, hastily cleaned up. Nothing looked like it had been spilled from the cooking, but she couldn’t tell what it might be. Then she found a deep, thin gouge in the floor nearby.
She went upstairs. Kylar’s wetboy grays were gone, as was Retribution. She was sliding the box back under the bed when she saw the Cenarian Sa’kagé symbol scrawled into the bedside table. “We have the girl,” the script below it said, in a careful, neat hand. Elene’s heart dropped again.
Someone had taken Uly, and Kylar had gone after them. The revelation brought fear and joy intermingled. Kylar hadn’t abandoned her, but Uly had been kidnapped by someone who knew who he was. Someone was trying to trap Kylar. But where had Kylar been when Uly was taken? If someone had grabbed Uly on the street, they might have left a note on the front doorstep, but Elene didn’t think they’d dare to break in with Kylar downstairs.
There was a shout from downstairs and pounding on the door. “Open the door. In the name of the Queen, open the door!”
When Elene saw Aunt Mea let the city watch in, her heart seized with fear again. In Cenaria, the guards were considered so corrupt that no one trusted them. But then Elene saw Aunt Mea’s obvious relief.
It took almost an hour to sort things out. A neighbor had seen Kylar leave carrying a body over his shoulder, a handsome young man with dark skin, his hair in microbraids, capped with gold beads. Elene knew instantly it had to be Jarl. After Kylar left with the body, the neighbor had gone running for the guards. The guards were only halfway to the house when they were met by the neighbor’s wife, who’d seen a woman with a bow enter the house about a minute before Uly returned home, and then leave with the girl. From the evidence, the watch thought the woman was the murderer, thank the God, but they still wanted to talk to Kylar.
Elene lay in bed late that night, mourning Jarl and trying to make sense of it. Why would Jarl come here? Because he was in danger? Because he wanted Kylar to do a job? Just to visit? Elene had to think it was to get Kylar to do a job. Jarl was too important to leave Cenaria on a whim, and if he had left because he was in danger, he’d have had bodyguards. So Jarl had been killed—by accident?—while trying to hire Kylar. Kylar had either agreed to do the job, or he was going out for vengeance. Either way, he’d left before Uly’s kidnapping. He might not know about it.
By noon the next day, Kylar still hadn’t returned. There was a knock on the door and Elene hurried to answer it. It was one of the guards from yesterday.
“I just thought you should know,” the young man said, “we talked to the gate guards as soon as we could, but shifts change and it’s hard to get word to everyone. A young woman matching the killer’s description left yesterday, headed north. She had a little girl with her. We’ve already sent men after her, but she’s got a good head start. I’m sorry.”
After the guard left, Braen and Aunt Mea looked at Elene as if they expected her to burst into tears.
“I’m going after Uly,” Elene said instead.
“But—” Aunt Mea began.
“I know, believe me, I know I’m the last person who should go. But what else am I going to do? If Kylar comes back here, tell him where I went. He’ll catch up with me, I’m sure. If he’s already gone after them, I’ll meet him on his way back. But if he doesn’t know Uly’s been kidnapped, I might be her only chance.”
Aunt Mea opened her mouth to protest once more, then closed it. “I understand.”
Elene’s things fit in a small pack, and by the time she got downstairs, Aunt Mea had packed her enough food for a week. “Is Braen going to say goodbye?” Elene asked.
Aunt Mea took Elene outside. “Braen says goodbye in his own way.” There was a horse saddled in front of the shop. It was sturdy and gentle looking. Elene’s eyes flooded with tears. She’d thought she was going to walk. “He says he’s had some big orders recently,” Aunt Mea said, obviously proud of her son. “Now go, child, and may the God go with you.”
Kylar was standing over the grave he’d dug and doing his best to get drunk. It was still two hours before dawn. The cemetery was quiet. The only sounds were leaves rattling in the wind and the complaints of night insects. Kylar had chosen this cemetery because it was the richest one on his way out of the city. After killing the Shinga, he’d robbed the man so he had plenty of money, and Jarl deserved the best. If the grave keeper were true to his word, there would even be a headstone here in a week.
They made quite a pair. Jarl laid out on the ground next to the hole, the gore a darker black than his skin, limbs slowly stiffening. Kylar was more blood-spattered than his dead friend, cruor drying into hard ridges on his limbs, cracking as he worked, reconstituting as he perspired. It made him look like he was sweating blood.
The grave was finished. Now Kylar was supposed to say something significant.
He drank more wine. He’d brought four skins and already emptied two. A year ago, two would have flattened him. Now, he wasn’t even tipsy. He finished the third skin then dutifully took deep draughts of the fourth until it was gone.
His eyes kept going back to Jarl’s corpse. He tried to imagine the wounds closing as his own had so long ago. But they weren’t closing. Jarl was dead. He’d been alive one second, and now he was simply not. Kylar finally understood the wry look in Jarl’s eyes, too.
The Cenarian wetboy that Shinga Sniggle had ordered killed wasn’t Kylar. It was Vi Sovari, and it was Vi Sovari who had killed Jarl with a red-and-black traitor’s arrow.
It was just like Jarl to find humor in it. Jarl confessed his love for a woman as she released the arrow that killed him.
“Shit,” Kylar said.
There were no words to express the magnitude of the ruin before him. Jarl was no more. This thing in front of Kylar was a slab of meat. Kylar wished he could believe in Elene’s God. He wanted to think Jarl and Durzo were in a better place. But he was honest enough to know that was all he wanted—some half-assed good feeling. Even if Elene’s God were real, Jarl and Durzo didn’t follow him. That meant they got to burn in hell, right?
He climbed down into the grave and pulled Jarl’s body in. Jarl’s skin was cold, clammy; morning dew was condensing on it. It didn’t feel right. Kylar laid him down as gently as he could and climbed back out. He still didn’t feel drunk.
Sitting on the pile of soft dirt next to the grave, he realized it was the ka’kari’s fault. His body treated alcohol like any poison, and healed him of it. It was so efficient that he’d have to drink massive quantities to get drunk. Just like Durzo had.
And I dismissed him as a drunk. It was yet another way Kylar had misunderstood his master, another way he’d blithely condemned the man. It made everything ache all over again.
“I’m sorry, brother,” Kylar said, and realized as the words crossed his lips that Jarl had been exactly that to him: an older brother who looked out for him. Why was Kylar condemned to having revelations about what people meant to him only after they were dead? “I’ll make it worth something, Jarl.” Making Jarl’s sacrifice mean something meant abandoning Elene and Uly and the life that might have been. He’d sworn to Uly that he wouldn’t abandon her as every other adult in her life had. And now he was doing it.
Was it like this for you, master? Is this where that ocean of bitterness began? Is giving up my humanity the cost of my immortality?
There was nothing else to do, nothing more to say. Kylar couldn’t even weep. As the first birds of morning began singing beauty to the waking sun, he filled the grave.