Her face was destroyed. Azoth had once seen a man kicked square in the face by a horse. He’d died wheezing on broken teeth and blood. Doll Girl’s face was worse.
Azoth looked away, but Durzo grabbed a handful of his hair and turned him back. “Look, damn you, look. This is what you’ve done, boy. This is what hesitation costs. When I say kill, you kill. Not tomorrow, not five days later. You kill that second. No hesitation. No doubts. No second thoughts. Obedience. Do you understand the word? I know better than you do. You know nothing. You are nothing. This is what you are. You are weakness. You are filth. You are the blood bubbling out of that little girl’s nose.”
Sobs burst from Azoth’s throat. He thrashed and tried to turn away, but Durzo’s grip was steel. “No! Look! This is what you’ve done. This is your fault! Your failure! Your deader did this. A deader shouldn’t do anything. A deader is dead. Not five days from now—a deader is dead as soon as you take the contract. Do you understand?”
Azoth threw up, and still Durzo held his hair, turning him so his vomit didn’t splatter on Doll Girl. When he was done, Durzo turned him around and let go. But Azoth turned away, not even wiping the puke from his lips. He looked at Doll Girl. She couldn’t last long. Every breath was labored. Blood welled, dribbled, dripped, slid onto the sheets, onto the floor.
He stared until her face disappeared, until he was only seeing red angles and curves where once that doll-pretty face had been. The red angles went white-hot and branded his memory, searing him. He held perfectly still so the scars on his mind would give a perfect image of what he’d done, would perfectly match the lacerations on her face.
Durzo didn’t say a word. It didn’t matter. He didn’t matter. Azoth didn’t matter. All that mattered was the bloody little girl lying on bloody sheets. He felt something inside collapsing, something squeezing the breath out of his body. Part of him was glad; part of him cheered as he felt himself being crushed, compacted into insignificance, into oblivion. This was what he deserved.
But then it stopped. He blinked and noticed there were no tears in his eyes. He wouldn’t be crushed. Something in him refused to be crushed. He turned to Durzo.
“If you save her, I’m yours. Forever.”
“You don’t understand, boy. You’ve already failed. Besides, she’s dying. There’s nothing you can do. She’s worthless now. A girl on the street is worth exactly what she can get for whoring. Saving her life is no kindness. She won’t thank you for it.”
“I’ll find you when he’s dead,” Azoth said.
“You’ve already failed.”
“You gave me a week. It’s only been five days.”
Durzo shook his head. “By the Night Angels. So be it. But if you come without proof, I’ll end you.”
Azoth didn’t answer. He was already walking away.
She wasn’t dying fast, but she was certainly dying. Durzo couldn’t help but have a certain detached professional rage. It had been sloppy, cruel work. With the horrible wounds on her face, it was obvious that she had been intended to live and live with hideous scars that would forever shame her. But instead, she was dying, wheezing out her life through a broken bloody nose.
There was nothing he could do for her, either. That was quickly evident. He’d killed both of the bigs who had been guarding her after the butchery, but he suspected that neither of them had been the cutter. They had both seemed a little too horrified at the evil they were part of. Some part of Durzo that still had a shred of decency demanded he go kill the twist who had done this immediately, but he’d tended to the little girl first.
She was lying on a low cot in one of the smaller safe houses he owned in the Warrens. He cleaned her up as well as he could. He knew a lot about preserving life: he’d learned that as he learned about killing. It was just a matter of approaching the line between life and death from the opposite side. So it was quickly apparent that her wounds were beyond his skills. She’d been kicked, and she was bleeding inside. That would kill her even if the blood she was losing from her face didn’t.
“Life is empty,” he told her still form. “Life is worthless, meaningless. Life is pain and suffering. I’m sparing you if I let you die. You’ll be ugly now. They’ll laugh at you. Stare at you. Point at you. Shudder. You’ll overhear their questions. You’ll know their self-serving pity. You’ll be a curiosity, a horror. Your life is worth nothing now.”
He had no choice. He had to let her die. It was only kind. Not just, perhaps, but kind. Not just. The thought ate at him, and her ugliness and blood, her wheezing, ate at him.
Maybe he needed to save her. For the boy. Maybe she would be just the goad to move him. Momma K said Azoth might be too kind. Maybe from this Azoth would learn to act first, act fast, kill anyone who threatened him. The boy had already waited too long. It was a risk either way. The boy had sworn himself to Durzo if he saved her, but what would having this cripple around do to a boy? She’d be a living reminder of failure.
Durzo couldn’t allow Azoth to destroy himself over a girl. He wouldn’t allow it.
The wheezing decided him. He wouldn’t kill her himself, and he wasn’t such a coward that he’d run away and let her die alone. Fine. He’d do what he could to save her. If she died, it wasn’t his fault. If she lived, he’d deal with Azoth.
But who the hell could save her?
Solon stared at the dregs of his sixth glass of, to be charitable, lousy Sethi red. Any honest vintner on the island would have been ashamed to serve such dreck at their least favorite nephew’s coming of age. And dregs? The glass must have been at least half dregs. Someone needed to tell the innkeeper this wine wasn’t meant to be aged. It was supposed to be served within a year. At the outside. Kaede wouldn’t have tolerated it.
So he told the innkeeper. And realized from the look on the man’s face that he’d already told him. At least twice.
Well, to hell with it. He was paying good money for bad wine, and he kept hoping after a few glasses he might not notice just how bad it was. He was wrong. Every glass just made him a little more irritable about the poor quality. Why would someone ship a bad wine all the way across the Great Sea? Did they actually make a profit on it?
As he put down another silver, he realized it was because of homesick fools like himself that they made a profit on it. The thought made him sick. Or maybe that was the wine. Someday he’d have to convince Lord Gyre to invest in Sethi wines.
He slumped further in his chair and waved for another glass, ignoring the few other patrons and the bored innkeeper. This was really an inexcusable exercise in self-pity, the likes of which he would have whipped out of Logan Gyre if he saw him indulging in something so juvenile. But he’d traveled so far, and for what? He remembered Dorian’s smile, that mischievous little grin the girls never stopped cooing over.
“A kingdom rests in your hands, Solon.”
“What do I care about Cenaria? It’s half a world away!”
“I didn’t say the kingdom was Cenaria, did I?” That damn grin again. Then it faded. “Solon, you know I wouldn’t ask this if there were any other way—”
“You don’t see everything. There’s got to be another way. At least tell me what I’m supposed to do. Dorian, you know what I’d be leaving. You know what this will cost me.”
“I do,” Dorian said, his aristocratic features showing the pain a great lord might feel when sending men to their deaths to accomplish some necessary goal. “He needs you, Solon—”
Solon’s memories were abruptly cut short with the jab of a dagger into his spine. He sat bolt upright, sloshing the dregs of his seventh glass onto the table.
“That’s enough, friend,” a low voice said into his ear. “I know what you are, and I need you to come with me.”
“Or else?” Solon asked, dizzy. Who could know that he was here?
“Yes. Or else.” Amused.
“Or else what? You’re going to kill me in front of five witnesses?” Solon asked. He rarely drank more than two glasses of wine at any time. He was too impaired for this. Who the hell was this man?
“And you’re supposed to be smart,” the man said. “If I know what you are and still threaten you, do you think I lack the will to kill you?”
He had Solon there. “And what’s to stop me—”
The dagger jabbed his spine again. “Enough talk. You’ve been poisoned. You do what I say and I’ll give you the antidote. Does that answer the rest of your questions?”
“Actually—”
“You’ll know you’re really poisoned because any time now your neck and armpits will start itching.”
“Uh-huh. Ariamu root?” Solon asked, trying to think. Was he bluffing? Why would he bluff?
“Plus a few other things. Last warning.”
His shoulder started itching. Damn. He could have taken care of ariamu root by itself, but this …“What do you want?”
“Head outside. Don’t turn, don’t say anything.”
Solon walked to the door, almost trembling. The man had said “what you are” not “who you are.” That might have referred to being Sethi, but his other comment obviously didn’t. The Sethi might be famous or infamous for many things, but rightly or wrongly, intelligence wasn’t one of them.
He’d barely touched the street when he felt the dagger jab his spine again. A hand drew his sword from the scabbard. “That won’t be necessary,” Solon said. Was that his imagination, or was his neck itching? “Show me what you want.”
The poisoner led him around the building where two horses were waiting. Together they rode south and then across the Vanden Bridge. They were swallowed by the Warrens, and though Solon didn’t think the man had been taking turns solely to get him lost, he soon was. Damn wine.
Finally, they stopped in front of one tiny shack among many. He dismounted unsteadily and followed the man inside. The poisoner wore dark clothes and a voluminous gray-black cloak with its hood up. All Solon could see was that he was tall, obviously athletic, and probably thin. The man nodded toward the door, and Solon stepped inside.
The smell of blood hit him instantly. A little girl was lying on a low bed, barely breathing, barely bleeding, her face a gory mess. Solon turned. “She’s dying. There’s nothing I can do.”
“I did what I could,” the man said. “Now you do what you do. I’ve left all the tools you may need.”
“Whatever you think I am, you’re wrong. I’m no healer!”
“She dies, you die.” Solon felt the weight of the man’s eyes on him. Then the poisoner turned and left.
Solon looked at the closed door and felt despair rising like twin waves of darkness coming from each side. Then he shook himself. Enough. So he was tired, still drunk, poisoned, itchy, and never had been much good at healing to begin with. Dorian had said that someone here needed him, hadn’t he? So surely Solon couldn’t die yet.
Unless, of course, just making Logan stand up to his mother was all that Solon had been needed for.
Well. That’s the problem with prophecy, isn’t it? You never know. Solon knelt by the little girl and began working.