Havemercy. Part 18

There was also the troublesome matter of my headaches.

They had come and gone all throughout the trip, and while I told myself they were no more than my way of adapting to the s.h.i.+ft in temperatures and alt.i.tude, I knew this for the flimsy lie that it was. Quite simply, theyad begun before I ever left for the Cobalts at all. The first, unprecedented and dizzying, had occurred during my exile, and it had taken all my skills at playacting to hide from Hal how greatly it distressed me.

Now, the only man I had to hide it from was myselfa"and the entire rest of my garrison of Reds, their captain, and the Ke-Han Blues. It was only a headache. Iad been getting them since the night before my return to the city, and Iad managed to find ways to function despite the discomfort. Undue stress could have brought it on, or my own entrenched fear of returning to battle.

Yet it was accompanied by a certain mind-numbing lack of equilibrium, as if someone had quite suddenly jerked the world out from underneath my feet and I was left to suffer through a maddening spin of blindness. Iad never suffered such headaches before, and there was absolutely no warning for thema"merely a sudden onset of pain, pinching sharp at my temples, followed by that whirlwind of confusion.

If I were to suffer from such a headache during the battle to come as I was suffering with more and more frequency these days, I did not want to think of the possible ramificationsa"not only for myself, but for my entire garrison as well.

A combination of my headaches and thinking about my headaches kept me up most of the night. So it was that I rose early and joined Achille for breakfast, both of us talking with spa.r.s.e, low words that antic.i.p.ated too many possible outcomes.

aWeall take their tunnels,a Achille said. aUse their strongholds against them. Weave been working out the system the past year now and weave finally got it figured. We send a distraction up one side of the mountain to keep them busy, and meanwhile the rest of us from all the other positions take our mark through the tunnels and advance on them. Before they know it, weall all be out. And, the way theyare depleted, there wonat be any stopping us.a He was repeating the plan to comfort himself.

I, too, was doing much the same, mouthing this speech of his that I had memorized.

It was a simple plan, a good plan. There was no foreseeable reason why it shouldnat have worked.

But the unforeseeable was what undid us in the end. The Ke-Han had been waiting all this time, waiting for us to grow c.o.c.ky, and wead done exactly that. We couldnat have suited their plans better than if wead been working with them toward their own victory.

In some ways, it was my own fault. That is not to say that I was egotistic enough about my vital position among our Reds and the other magicians along with us, but one must always accept responsibility for his own actions, and in that way a great deal of the fault was my own. The troublesome headachesa"I realized it too latea"hadnat been my own private suffering, but rather the indication of something much larger involving many more than myself.

There was no such thing as a singularity. It was what wead learned first as magicians. It was the most important truth of who we were and what we did, and Iad forgotten it as swiftly as a dragonas pa.s.s through the air.

My headaches were no more mine than they were harmless, and once wead pa.s.sed through the tunnels to the other side, that much became painfully evident.

The first sign was that the distraction wasnat working as it should have been. Achille had sent several magicians with a detachment of Reds to aid it in hanging together, but the magicians were the purpose, all with Talents made for flash and destruction.

When we exited the tunnels, we should have been able to hear the results of our ruse, or see them at least, great colorful fireworks and rumbling earth, or even the warrior cries of the Ke-Han that indicated battle was at hand. There was none of this rea.s.suring evidence, however, and I felt an uneasiness heavy in my chest as I caught myself scanning the jutting blue rock face of the Cobalts, which were stony and impa.s.sive and gave nothing away.

The uneasiness spread throughout my arms and legs, too swift to be the onset of anything that I could tie back to a simple worry about our progress. No, this was entirely physical, and I occupied my mind with trying to gauge exactly how bad it was and how I might be able to go on standing so long as we kept moving. None of the others seemed to be exhibiting any discomfort, and I thought that even if we couldnat hear the various noises indicating that our distraction was under way, that didnat necessarily mean it wasnat. It was quite possible that the men and magicians on the other side were at that very moment experiencing the full flush of victory.

Then Alcibiades collapsed.

Head been a soldier before he was a magician, and the latter was only due to the Esaras deciding some fifteen years prior that any man with a Talent fighting in the war would d.a.m.n well learn to use it whether he wanted to or not. Still, he had some skill with watera"once head got past his initial prejudicea"and though wead never interacted for any particular length of time, he was a singularly competent man.

Achille called us all to a halt with a silent gesture, signaling for someone to check on our fallen comrade. Marcelline, standing closest to me, adjusted the warm collar of her coat with fingers that shook almost imperceptibly.

aDo you feel it?a she asked, but I had no idea to what she was referring.

I shook my head. She looked a little green against the white and red of her clothing.

aThatas what I mean,a she said softly, more because it seemed as though she couldnat bring herself to speak any louder, rather than any caution toward being overheard. aThereas nothing there.a I thought that perhaps she meant the wind, and certainly it was odd the Ke-Han hadnat begun to attack us with it yet. Then her eyes rolled up toward the back of her head, white and startling. I caught her before she hit the ground.

Someone shouted the warning, and even as I felt the headache begin like a battering ram at both of my temples, I turned to see the Ke-Han forces coming in from all sides, closing the net of the trap we had walked right into.

Out front, I saw a great gus.h.i.+ng blast of water come exploding from the rock. There were veins of sulfurous hot springs running below the Cobalts, and I guessed that they were what now spewed forth from the land beneath us, scalding the men from the second midrange fort and giving our men some time to rally around a common point. I wondered if perhaps Alcibiades had regained consciousness, after all; this seemed something I should feel pleased over, if only I could bring myself to feel anything at all beyond the pounding in my temples.

I couldnat. Rather, it was more like what Marcelline had been describing, an absence of that familiar, constant presencea"my Talenta"which left me feeling vulnerable and hollowed out as a man made from straw husks. It was akin to the strange, flooding loss of strength I experienced when I had a fever.

I should have moved, or tried to do my duty as both a soldier of the realm and a magician of the Basquiat, which made the code all the more important: I must necessarily do whatever was in my power to stop the Ke-Hanas advance. As a magician, whatever I had in my power was considerably more than the average man, and as such I knew that the soldiers had come to depend on our help, our protection.

As far as I could tell, however, after that first show of defiance from Alcibiades, everyone seemed to have been taken with the same affliction as I, for I saw no telltale rumbles of destruction, nor streaking jets of fire. Instead, the Ke-Han rallied around their injured, then surged forward once more, blue coats the very color of the mountain rock.

I placed Marcelline on the ground behind me, for I would need both my hands free, and even as I wavered on my feet, I drew a deep breath to draw on the place where my Talent rested, hidden deep within. My stomach gave a lurch in revolt against what I found there, and at last I understood what Marcelline had tried to warn me of.

There was nothing there.

It was as though someone had gone into my chest and scooped out something infinitely more vital than my heart or stomach, and the sensation brought me to my knees.

I heard around me all at once the clang and crash of metal as used in battle, the hoa.r.s.e cries of men Iad known and eaten with as they fought on, despite the sudden onset of our debilitating handicap.

Achille wasnat in plain view, for even my vision had blurred distressingly for me, as though, with the absence of what anch.o.r.ed me, everything else was falling apart. Maybe I was falling apart. Nothing like this had ever happened before. I had no way of knowing.

The world went white in from the edges, erasing the scene before me as surely as if Iad lost consciousnessa"not a blackout, but a whiteouta"with the sharp, blinding force of a lightning bolt.

Everything that followed was a blank, clean slate.

When I awoke, I was in a tent that, from the lack of light streaming in through the fabric, must have been in the garrison at the foothills.

I ached all over, and the headache pounded still in my head, as though it wished to force my eyes from their sockets. Something smelled very strongly of blood. I sat up at oncea"a grievous error, as nausea rolled through me so that I had to lean over one side of the cot Iad been placed on to divest myself of the meager contents of my stomach. In a streak of wild luck, someone appeared to have placed a pan there for exactly that purpose.

To my right someone chuckled weakly, more of a pathetic coughing than anything else, and I lifted my heada"slowly this timea"to examine my surroundings. Alcibiades lay p.r.o.ne on the cot next to mine, nose like the prow of a dying s.h.i.+p and bandaged quite heavily about the head.

aWhere are we?a I said, and swallowed to work the saliva into my mouth, which felt as dry as sandpaper. My throat hurt as though Iad been shouting.

Had I been shouting?

It took him a very long time to replya"so long that I thought head fallen asleep. When he did speak, the sound startled me and set all my nerves jangling as though I were a high-strung horse. aBase camp, med tent. aTil we get moved, anyway.a aAh,a I said, and surrendered my head to the cool softness of the pillow below it. There were troublesome thoughts floating across my skull, but not a one of them seemed strong enough to break through the red haze of throbbing in my brain. aWeare to be moved?a aSoon as possible,a said Alcibiades, in the same scratchy voice as mine. aHead doctor, she nearly had a fit when she saw us.a I didnat feel as though there were anything visibly wrong with me, and that surely the head doctor of a medical unit during wartime would have seen a great many terrible things. aAm I missing a leg?a I said at last, as it was the only thing I could think of, and might have gone a long way toward explaining why I couldnat feel either one of them.

aNo,a he said, without a trace of humor in his voice. aItas because weare magicians.a I overlooked the contempt in his voice as he said this last, because it had set something else turning in my mind, like a great, if slow-moving, waterwheel.

The Reds had gone on fighting when wead been stricken, that much I did remember. It was just that they went on fighting without us. The others whoad been . . . taken, I supposed I could call it, by this infernal numbness, were Alcibiades and Marcelline, both of them magicians. When I tried to think on it now, I found that I could not remember having seen any of the ordinary soldiers fall prey to whatever strange illness had taken hold of us. If it had struck magicians and magicians only, I thought against the pain in my head, then . . .

Then I had to be sick again, and I very nearly didnat make it to the pan this time around.

Iad never heard of anything that could debilitate so selectively. There were illnesses that were intrinsically magic, of course, but they ravaged those with Talent and those without equally. That whatever had hit us in the mountains had hit only magicians was a curiosity I might have found fascinating if it had happened hundreds of years ago instead of just a handful of hours before.

An unsettling thought occurred to me, and I looked once more to Alcibiades. aThe others. The captain?a He shook his head, very slowly from left to right, and I felt a wave of sadness overtake my heart. aThey thought we were all dead, I thinka"you were certainly lying there like you werea"and I got pinned under Emeric while I was still out of it.a Alcibiades paused to clear his throat, as though head got something caught in it all of a sudden. aWhen I woke up, it was all quieta"theyad moved ona"and Iad have gone right past you too if you hadnat made a noise like you werenat dead but dying, maybe.a aThen I owe you my thanks,a I said, speaking more to distract myself from the memories I had of those who were now gone: of the easy companionability I had with Achille, and the idea of his kind eyes open and lifeless in the far reaches of the mountain range. aItas fortunate that you were able to overcome whateveras attempted to bleed us of our senses.a aI was a soldier before ever I was a magician, Margrave,a he said, breathing shallow through his clenched teeth. aWe learn how to go on through a little discomfort.a I resented the implication that all magicians were soft, untested warriors, but I thought that it might be ungrateful to pick a fight with a man whoad in all likelihood saved my life. And besides, my headache was making it hurt to speak.

I grunted, instead.

Alcibiades went quiet after that, and I drifted into sleep, more pa.s.sed out from the pain in my head than any kind of a real rest.

When I awoke a second time, it was to the sight of a silhouette in the open tent flap, and Iad no concept of the amount of time that had been lost to me while I was unconscious.

aMargrave Royston,a said the newcomer, in the curt, official voice of a bureaucrat or one of the Provostas wolves. aAnd Alcibiades of the Glendarrow, by order of the Esar you are to accompany me to the Basquiat with all due haste.a aCharming,a I said, just as soon as I could work up the energy to speak. aI cannot speak for my colleague at present, but rest a.s.sured we will follow you as soon as we are able to get up.a The man didnat laugh, but I was thinking more about what it meant that the Esar had become involved and what it meant that there was already a system set in place to cart us off to the Basquiat, of all places.

The Basquiat wasnat the Esaras province.

I thought of who had been missing at the ball, and came up with the same answer every time, that each of thema"whatever other qualities they possesseda"had been some manner or other of magician. Were they in the Basquiat, as well? If only I could have made myself think, think, beyond the dull arrhythmic pounding between my ears.

aYou are not to speak with anyone,a the man went on, rolling his proclamation up as larger, burlier men with stretchers came in. aYou will have no contact with the outside world. Any discussion of what occurred in the Cobalt Mountains will be viewed as inciting undue panic among the people and thus an act of treason.a The thought of Hal came to me then, smiling and sudden and so vivid that it almost stopped the ache that plagued me.

aMy . . . apprentice,a I said, too weak and out of sorts even to demand information from the medics. aI should get a message to him.a aYour family members and a.s.sociates will be informed of your situation,a said the man as rote, weary, and bored as if this were an everyday occurrence. I had to wonder how many times head recently said the same thing, rolled off the same rea.s.surances. It was by no means a comforting thought.

aHow long before we can leave?a From a ways off I heard the familiar voice, laced with irritability. Alcibiades had either just regained consciousness or chosen this particular moment to speak up.

Our only answer was the click-slam of twin carriage doors.

af.u.c.ked as not,a Alcibiades said wearily.

I was slid off my cot and onto the stretcher, and another period of emptiness claimed me.

THOM.

I left the medic room with ash on my hands and grease on my mouth and my heart clamped round with iron wire, the sort they used to keep urchins out of the shops in Molly.

I knew no other way to say it and there was no hiding from it, either. Rook was my brother; I had no doubt in my mind. It made a sick kind of sense, really, and the more I turned it over in my head, the more I found that I could get around it. This was the reason I could never just walk away from him, or couldnat ever just let the matter lie, not even in my own head. Iad thought at first that it must have been some wild, proud streak in me that Marius had neglected to stamp out: a professoras instinct to impart wisdom, or my own stubbornness in having wanted desperately to be right about him, right about my own theory that within everyone was some capacity for change.

What Rook had given me instead was the knowledge that, at the very least, I had better reason than the Isobel-Magrittes of the world to follow him around like a stray. After all, Iad begun doing it since birth, despite what obstacles and separations in the road between us had fallen since.

His name had once been John, almost too ridiculously simple for what head become since I was told head died in the fire. Mine had been Hilary; the wh.o.r.es who raised me called me Thom, and because it was a name my dead brother never called me, I allowed them to use it. Subsequently, it had stuck. I a.s.sumed a part of myself had died in that firea"the part of myself named by my parentsa"and I left it at that. Sometimes I dreamed of him, my dead brother, but he was always faceless, the features blurred. Understandable, since Iad been no more than three years old when the tragedy struck us.

Head told me to stay where I wasa"head gone out for some reasona"Iad later followed a bird, I think, or a dog. Perhaps a kitten. I never did as he told, could never remember, and he was often angry with me. I found my way back only just as it was beginning to get dark, and the house was in flames, and there was a lady crying; these were all the bare pieces I remembered, and no more than that.

Someone told me my brother was dead. I believed him, since my brother had always made it a point to get home before nightfall. I didnat remember our parents, though when I was older I realized that they must have been among the countless other young couples who realized just how expensive it was to raise children. Theyad cut their losses early and left me in Johnas care. He hadnat been old enough to take care of me, and yet he had.

I hadnat cried when our parents left. When I lost my brother, Iad cried for days and days without end.

I was three then, and twenty-four now. Twenty-one years had pa.s.sed in the interima"twenty-one years during which the one constant in my life was the specter of my dead brothera"dead, I often thought, because head come back, thought me within the burning house, and run inside to save me. I only came to this conclusion when I was much older and sought to explain the occurrences that had stamped themselves, so unforgiving, on my memory in red-hot flashes.

What must have actually happeneda"for my own peace of mind, I needed more than anything to fit the missing parts of the puzzle togethera"was that John must have returned sometime after the fire had been put out, after Iad been led away from the conflagration by the neighboring women of ill repute, whoad taken pity on me. He must have thought the same thing I had, or perhaps head been told by the same man that his brother was dead.

Head told me to stay where I was. He had no reason to believe I hadnat done just as he said.

I believed I suddenly understood Rook bettera"but even as the thought crossed my mind I was struck with guilt, fierce and swift. I was pacing the halls of the Airman, and each time my path led me again and again to Rookas private door. I had a brother again.

I leaned against the door for a moment, pressing my cheek against the frame and, on the most foolish of whims, tested the k.n.o.b, barely thinking about what I was doing.

It turned, and the door swung open. Before I could stop myself from intruding, I stumbled inside.

Here I was: in the belly of the beast. It smelled faintly of ash, of sulfur and fire, and most pressingly of metal. The bed was unmade, three pairs of boots by the closet; there was a trapdoor that I knew led to Havemercyas bay. There was a print of the famous portrait of Lady Greylace, the most renowned wh.o.r.e in all of Volstov, but no books at all. I nearly laughed; I nearly cried.

It smelled of hima"on everything, every shadow in every cornera"a gla.s.s half-full of water on the desk and a jewel box full of his earrings. Earlier this night, or on any other night for that matter, my brother might have died a second time without my ever learning that head lived.

I sat down on the edge of his bed and knotted my fingers in the sheets. When he returned to his room I would tell hima"for head opened himself to me, whether it was from loss of blood or a sudden s.h.i.+ft in alt.i.tude or any other stupid incomprehensible reason. Head spoken my true name, and I would use his, and perhaps we might mend what had broken between us twenty-one years ago.

It was possible. I knew it was.

I waited there for hours, long past sunrise, rehearsing what Iad say and how Iad say it. Rook, I might begin, or perhaps John, though I thought the latter might be too sudden. You couldnat spring this sort of realization on a man the way it had been sprung on me, though that had been an accident. I wished to spare him some of that paina"for despite all his cruelties, I remembered a time when he was gentle and kind, bandaging the knees I always sc.r.a.ped, or catching the fireflies I clamored for. Besides all that, he was my brother. It wasnat every day that a man could be resurrected from the dead, and I knew that I must treat this as gently as head once treated me. It was more delicate, more precious, than any other secret Iad ever held.

Yet it was also the first time Iad ever had something on Rook, and it gave me a disturbing flush of some feeling I didnat want to identify, as similar as it was to victory. True, I was for the first time in a position of possessing some knowledge that Rook did not, and an important piece of information, to boot, but this was entirely different. This was family, and I was no airman who kept secrets just to be hurtful or to lord over them who didnat know.

At long last he returned, flinging the door open and half-kicking off one of his boots. They must have given him something to numb the burnsa"for there were great strides being made of late in medicines that eased almost any kind of paina"but his eyes were tired, and his s.h.i.+rt was open to reveal the bandage swathed across his chest.

He saw me then and stilled, wary as a tomcat on the prowl in an alleyway. This was his territory, and I a threat, engaged in trespa.s.s.

aYou f.u.c.king waited up for me?a he said finally, his eyes still narrowed and all of him tensed and ready for a fight. He was too tired for ita"despite his protestations, he was human before anything elsea"and I stood quickly. aOr were you snooping around?a aWhat?a All my rehearsal seemed for naught; Iad forgotten every line as if Iad never thought of them at all. aSnooping?a aI know about that pact youave got with thaEsar,a he snarled, ranging past me and shrugging out of his s.h.i.+rt with some delicacy. The burns clearly must have still troubled him. Of course they did. Iad seen what they looked like a few hours before.

aAbout thea"What?a aJeannotas got a friend in the palace,a he said, aand if you tell this to thaEsar, Iall gut you from the belly up. But we know you met with him that night at the ball. We know heas got you in his pocket like a f.u.c.king puppet.a I shook my head, trying to clear it. aNo,a I said, ayou donat understanda"a aYou want to enlighten me, then, as to why it was you and His Majesty needed to meet so private-like?a He came close to me without any warning, nearly backing me up against the wall, and I could smell the burnt flesh, the medicinal stench of the balm on his chest, the metallic residue on his palms and, beneath that, blood lacing everythinga"always blood beneath. I should have told him then, should have let the knowledge come out of me all at once before I let my fear of it undo me, as it was already doing.

Yet if I told him now, there was no telling what head do. He was unpredictable, he was purposefully cruel, he was probably insane: All these things added up suddenly and startlingly to make an inarguable case, a perfect equation for why I should keep my mouth shut. It wasnat simply that I was afraid of Rook, for now that fear was laced with a kind of hurt running through it, a marbled vein of regret for what Iad lost from my brother because I did remember a time when head been kind. Looking at him now made all sorts of emotions rise that I didnat want to deal with at present, and certainly not where anyone so cunning as Rook could see.

So I held my tongue, and lifted my chin with instinctive defiance, and tried my best not to think about how head trusted me with his memories and the companionable silence that had followed.

Iad been so desperate for such a sign from hima"any sign at all that all my work had not been in vain, that I wasnat simply pouring my efforts into an empty yawning mouth of contempt and trickery. Rook had seemed changed over our time since the ball, but faced with my own lack of perception nowa"my own brother in front of me, mad and bleeding and more than a little tireda"I was forced to wonder. Perhaps Iad never even made a dent in that armor of his, thicker than dragon-scale and twice as resilient. Perhaps all this waiting I was doing, looking for the barest shadow of kindness, something I could misconstrue as affection, was because I knew that I would accept it from him, and gratefully. Perhaps this was because Iad sensed in him all along my long-lost brother, who had been kind once, before time and whatever strange fate had befallen him ruined that instinct forever.

aWell?a he asked.

aIam not spying on you,a I whispered.

That much was at least the truth, but there were other truths I should have spokena"other truths I might have spokena"but when I opened my mouth to speak, the words abandoned me. He looked at me as though I were mad, gaping like a fish, and I had no means to protest this a.s.sumption. I was mad.

He made a sound, rather more like a grunt than anything that could be misconstrued as human speech. He either believed me or didnat, and the fact that I couldnat tell the difference upset me just as it always had, so not everything had changed.

aBetter not be,a he said, and brought his face so close to mine that I felt momentarily off-kilter, as though the earth had tipped sharply beneath my feet.

Then, just as suddenly, Rook turned away from me and the ground righted itself once more. I thought that I could say it then, unfair a thing as it was to sneak in on a man when he wasnat looking. I swallowed, and cleared the dryness from my throat. It was a poor charade; I could no more speak than I could move.

This wasnat to be the first time I kept the truth from him.

That night he didnat even kick me from his room, just flung himself down onto his bed and was asleep almost before he hit the mattress; he must have known he had me pinned beneath his thumb like a bug, incapable of crossing him. This was the power Rook had over me.

I watched him for a few guilty moments to see if his face eased at all, if the harsh lines of it grew peaceful with sleep. I wanted to recognize him, but I didnat. Then I forced myself from the room and curled against this secret as if it were slitting me open the way Rook had promised.

I think I understood now, if only a little, the reason for his sudden interest, his achange of hearta: It was to keep me close, keep me where he could watch me and make sure I wasnat going to betray the corps. So long as there was a steady stream of reticent confidences and hesitant looks that suggested he would open up if only I stayed around, there would be no reporting to thaEsar. It was so clever that I would have experienced a grudging admiration were it not for the already-consuming wealth of guilt and confusion swamping me. Moreover, I was humiliated, for there had been some small part of me that had dared to hope at making a difference with Rook. And now, for all Iad thought it through so carefully, it was all dashed to pieces as surely as if thrown from his dragon as he sped her too quickly through the night.

Everything had changed, and nothing. I had failed on more counts than I could possibly name because I had come no closer to understanding Rook than Iad ever been, and I myself was now possessed of a secret almost too large to keep. I could no longer fault him for his questionable morals. He was my own brother, and I could not even summon up the wherewithal to tell him so. I told myself that I only needed more time to sort out my feelings before I took them to Rook, but I knew that a larger part of it than I wished to admit was rather the gratification of wielding some new power over him, and the lie became harder and harder as time pa.s.sed. If pressed to choose, Iad say that I was worse than head ever been even when he was at his most vindictive.

I was too preoccupied with my own thoughts to notice the change that came over the city. Truth be told, I wasnat paying attention. My focus had so turned inward that Iad completely forgotten there was a city living and breathing all around me. And, because Rook was off duty for the following week, I was allowed to forget there was a war.

Yet I wasnat living inside a complete vacuum. Now and then Iad catch moments of the other airmenas conversation in the halls, hushed and grave. One afternoon I even heard Adamo shouting inside his private quarters, though to whom he was shouting I couldnat be sure and had no right to ask.

That night, when Rook cornered me in the hall, he grabbed my wrist hard, and said, aWe have some talking to do.a Fear rose sharp and quick as the guilt, and I let him lead me, all numbness, into his room and shut the door behind us.

He looked uncomfortable for a minute, then gritted his teeth as though what he was trying to say was about to kill him, or worse. Finally, he managed a curt, aHave ainat right.a For a moment I didnat understand him. I was expecting him to tell me head knowna"that head read my thoughtsa"that he knew me for what I was and he never wanted to see me again so long as we both lived. Breathing ceased to be an autonomic function, and I concentrated on drawing air, along with as little attention as possible. Iad been prepared for the worst, not some garbled sentence I couldnat pa.r.s.e. aWhat?a I asked.

aHave,a he snarled. aHavemercy. She ainata"she isnata"right. That mess I got myself into? Not for any reason I can figure. Itas like sometimes sheas okay and sometimes . . . she isnat.a I stared at him, relieved and terrified all at once. This, more than anything, cemented my place among the morally bereft and bankrupt. He was confiding in me a second time, this time of his own volition and not due either to pain or to blood loss, with no alternative motive, while I was keeping from him so ma.s.sive a secret that I hadnat slept in days. aYou . . . Havemercy,a I managed at last. aSheasa"What do you mean she isnat right?a Rook growled, clearly finding our means for communication ineffective. aShe ainat flying right. Itas like weare not speaking the same language. Itas like weare f.u.c.king strangers, is what itas like, or worse. I tell her to do something and she just doesnat do ita"like she doesnat hear what Iam saying or even recognize it for words.a aI donat know anything about dragons,a I said carefully, moving to sit beside him. aI donat understand why youare coming to mea"a aBecause you can f.u.c.king tell thaEsar about it,a he said, nearly biting my head off with the words. aHeas expecting a report back from youa"so, tell him. Tell him that Havemercyas f.u.c.king off. Itas quicker than going through the proper channels.a aWell,a I said, understanding why he was confiding in me yet again. I didnat bother to argue my casea"I wasnat spying on my brother, but he was close enough to the truth of what thaEsar had asked me to do that it didnat really matter.