(1)
Messe agus Pangur Bán,
cechtar nathar fria shaindán:
bíth a menmasam fri seilgg,
mu menma céin im shaincheirdd.
I and Pangur Bán, my cat
'Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night.
—written by an anonymous monk; translated by Robin Flower
Bracers.
She was reluctant to pack away Adratha’s bracers. They were a gift: they should be used as they were intended. But they were also old, and did not fit her very well, and the enchantment on them, the glover had said, was failing. And she had sold her armour.
Boots.
She had sold her armour, to the local guild: she still had enough loyalty to do that. It fetched her just enough to pay for the finest pair of thieves’ boots: silent, stealthy and cosy.
Belt.
When she asked where the boots had been made, the fences sent both of them, Sarevok and her, to the glover who would sell her the enchanted bracers. He threw in the girdle for free, just for smiling at him and brightening his day, he said.
Sarevok bought a belt for himself there.
Bow.
The woman showed her a bow with a thin, frayed string, and said that it shot out invisible arrows, and that it had been given by some lich to some guardian of his to protect him. Curiously enough, when Imoen asked for a test shot of the ‘invisible arrow,’ the woman grew rather flustered and almost tore out the bow from her client’s hands.
And when Sarevok peeked out from under his hood and, quite amused, inquired the shopkeeper how come such a powerful bow could have been at all taken from the aforesaid guardian, Imoen received a discount.
Cloak.
Having bought the boots, and the bracers, and the bow, and the arrows, and the scrolls, and the clothes—for, as it had turned out, for one rich enough, putting enchantments on normal clothes proved no trouble at all—she was almost broke; and, although the shopkeeper who had the azure cloak did allow her to put it on, and although it fit her perfectly, and Sarevok confirmed that the cloak’s enchantment was twisting her image as declared, the price was simply too high. She must wear the old one. At least it had been cleaned.
She looked into the mirror once again; adjusted the belt slightly; adjusted the cloak; smiled at her own reflection, picked up the bow and the quiver, and left the room and the residence.
Sarevok was already outside, holding Deneb’s and Grasshopper’s reins; reclined against the wall of the house, with his arms folded, his head crooked, and his eyes half-closed, he had the most studiously lazy air about him. She had made sure that he would not hear the front door open, or close; and she was making sure that he would not hear her as she was going down the stairs; nevertheless, halfway down, she heard his amused voice, “At last. I was thinking I would have to go there and remove you by force, sister.”
“Thus spake the man who spent three hours picking the pattern for a tattoo,” she replied amiably. “How do I look?”
“Lethal, of course,” she heard, and sighed: certain people were incurably single-minded.
“In that case, let’s go, brother.”
-----
There had been two days of Trademeet: two days and two nights, filled with shopping, sightseeing, partying, and, in general, lazing about, with and without company. The company would be leaving town on the morrow: today, then, was the day the siblings would hie to the Windspear Hills to settle an old debt and, perchance, learn something of the wizard who called himself Irenicus; and to practice magic.
The idea was simple: they had both, he and she, started to study the arcane, back in Athkatla, for their private reasons; but they both, he and she, had deeply ingrained fighting habits proper to their respective trades. If these habits were to change, practice was required. Thus, practice would happen.
The Windspear Hills were, as they had learnt in the pubs and taverns of Trademeet, the ideal type of land for such noble entertainment: rough and uninhabited, perfect for two wizard initiates with much determination to learn, but little formal training.
The healing potions had cost a small fortune.
-----
“I have been thinking, sister,” Sarevok vouched.
However long it had taken, they had, in the end, managed to kill the imprudent ankheg without once touching any of their swords, Imoen’s new bow or the druid staff Sarevok had brought with him and had been eyeing curiously the whole day; exhilarated and proud of themselves, they had decided to return to the horses, eat something and simply rest for a while. The day was extremely warm, and invited such laziness; and they were both, they had discovered, still hungry and thirsty for the sun, even if, as the tan started to come up, the fine meshes of scars Irenicus had given them also became much more visible.
“What have you been thinking, brother?” Imoen asked, yawning and correcting the leaf she used to protect the skin of her nose. The little clouds were nice, she decided. And the water of the small lake was making a pleasant noise. It was a pity that there weren’t more plants around, though; the Hills were almost all sandstone and water. Although there must be a forest somewhere here, if there were dryads—
“When I leave, you will be alone,” Sarevok said, and thus captured Imoen’s attention. She propped herself on her elbows, looked at him, and hazarded, warily, “Yes?”
The Fentan Knights, as it had turned out, were not in Trademeet. They had left for the north several months ago—which must have been right after they had helped Cernd; apparently with the purpose of clearing out that old dwarven ruin near Gullykin, Durlag’s Tower. How much time could clearing out one ruin take? Perhaps there had been complications.
“Deneb is yours, if you want her, of course,” the man, undaunted by his interlocutor’s evident lack of enthusiasm for the conversation, continued, and Imoen’s gaze went to the small patch of grass where their horses were grazing. (You’ve called your horse… Grasshopper, brother? No, sister. The horse told the druid who took care of him that he was called Grasshopper. I merely had no incentive to try and convince him otherwise.) Did she want Deneb? Horses were an awful lot to take care of—
“Mical agreed to continue to take care of her,” Sarevok said, as if reading her mind; and Imoen found herself squirming slightly. Mical was the hazel-eyed one, and she had been extremely glad to have found out that Sarevok had dealt with him himself on that very first night she had spent in the Lady Itona’s house. Whatever that entailed, she did not want to know: but the boy still lived, and her apology, when she had tried to apologise, had been heard, with that slightly hostile air which had said that, plain as plains, an apology from a house-guest to a house-servant was impossible, and which, for a moment, had made her feel plainly rotten.
“You would have to find a different stable, though, I believe,” she heard, and sighed. The conversation with the Lady Itona ranked as the third most unpleasant moment of the past days. The Trademeet guild-mistress, on the surface polite as honey, concealed in her words poisoned daggers. She was clearly bent on resenting Imoen the embarrassment the younger woman had caused her by breaking into her house; and living in the house when her place was so clearly among the servants. Funny how that went—
“However. As I said, sister… I have been thinking, and I believe that I have found the solution to the problem.”
What problem? she thought, suddenly drawn back to the outside reality. Oh. That I’m to be alone. Crap, after yesterday tantrum, he must think—
“Consider it a parting gift.”
She blinked. They had agreed that there would be no gifts—or, better said, understood that there would be no gifts. Gifts were insidious. They were personal. They made one think of the giver. The way Adratha’s bracers made her think of Pauden and the druids.
She unrolled the piece of parchment, half-suspecting what she would find there; beside her, Sarevok was explaining calmly, “Since a familiar is bound to its summoner, it could not betray you, sister, unless with its very presence. It could guard you in your sleep and protect you until you found a company befitting you. And, since the familiar which answers to the summoner’s call responds to the summoner’s character, there would be no conflict of personality. Or interest,” he added, amused; and far too abruptly to genuinely not care.
In a way, she was impressed. The level of empathy required to think that it was she who should ultimately decide whether she wanted the gift— Of course, a merchant and a diplomat must know the carrots, and not only the sticks.
“That is… very thoughtful of you, brother,” she replied nonetheless; and smiled. “Thank you.”
“As a matter of fact,” she added, rummaging through her own stuff, “I have something for you as well. I have been planning to give it to you later, when we actually parted, but, since you had to hurry up with your own present—”
She waited for the man’s reaction; and, trying to chase away the butterflies from her stomach, said, “Did you know that it’s possible to talk to a familiar, brother? It can also serve as a scout, or a trap-finder, and it sometimes has a bit of magic of its own…” She bit her lip.
Her brother’s face set into a mask. “Have I made a fool of myself, sister?” he asked simply.
“What?” Imoen, bemused, asked first; and then, finally understanding, vehemently replied, “No.”
“Then I am grateful for your most insightful gift, sister,” Sarevok replied stiffly, formally, as if he were speaking to a stranger he were thanking for some princely bequest; and she wanted to hit him. It was not she who had started on the personal business this time. He should have known better than to try this gambit when they still had time to spend with each other, and not expect her to retaliate in kind.
And he must understand this: for suddenly, forcibly—she could literally see the tense muscles of his neck and shoulders slacken—he relaxed, as if saying that he was damned already and to the Abyss with all—and smirked. “Well, why not?” he laughed to himself, and fairly tore from the ground.
“Why not?” Imoen laughed in agreement; and followed.
-----
A dark spot appeared on the blinding background of the sun’s disc; then, it grew; and grew still. The golden eagle gave out a massive cry and swooped down rapidly, halting only at the last moment to settle on the man’s expectantly outstretched forearm.
Show-off.
I don’t think there has ever been any doubt of that, Imoen thought, laughing at the expression of pure, unadulterated, unselfconscious bliss on her brother’s face. Sarevok looked as if someone told him he was about to ascend to the Throne of Blood right now.
Well, this was, at the end of the day, about the only thing he would ever be happy with, she laughed. Himself: big, golden, with sharp talons and absolutely no regard for human life— Familiars, after all, responded to the summoner’s own personality.
Familiars are s’pposed to be small, y’know. But that chick— What d’ya think her wingspan is?
I think that this works on a slightly different scale for him, Imoen thought. Er, by the way, you are my familiar, I take it? Only I can’t see you, so you must be behind me… If I turn around, what will I see?
Nuh-nuh. Ain’t tellin’ ya that. Why don’tcha turn round and see for yerself?
Imoen turned around. Slowly.
“Oh.”
-----
The cat was very small, barely out of kittenhood, and mostly grey, with rosy points on the snout, ears, paws and the tip of its tail; he was a he and he had a slightly triangular head and a pair of the bluest eyes Imoen had ever seen. Somewhere in the back of her brain, a name appeared: Wichien-maat. Moon Diamond.
What? she thought indignantly. Are you kidding me? I’m not calling you that! You’re Pangur.
The cat whipped his tail, and, she was sure, would have shrugged if he could. Oh, well. Was worth a try?
Right. Come here, you.
Nope. Pangur, y’say? Like in that old verse?
Yes. I happen to like it, thank you very much. By the way, I’m Imoen. Why won’t you come here?
‘Cause I like it where I am, of course.
Imoen rolled her eyes. No conflict of personality or interest, yeah, right…
Yeah. Right. Oh, and, by the way. Glad t’meetcha. Though I kinda knew that already, y’know? Yer name, I mean. Tell me who’s the birdie with the brawn, though. I feel like huntin’.
At which point, Imoen cocked an eyebrow; and, turning back to face her brother, said, “Sarevok—”
She did not finish: two things interrupted her almost immediately. The first was the sight of her brother, petting carefully the feathers on the predator’s eagerly crooked head; Sarevok and his eagle were clearly still lost deep within their private paradise.
The second was the feel of small, but extremely sharp, claws biting into her skin as something grabbed her left leg and scrambled up it and up her back, finally to settle on her left shoulder, in just the proper spot for its breath to tickle her on the ear. She looked at the patch of grey and rosy fur from the corner of her eye and hissed out, “Get off.”
When she lifted her gaze again, Sarevok was looking at her.
“So, sister,” he said, with a glimmer of terminal amusement in his eyes, “I see that you have become acquainted with your new custodian. If I may, therefore, introduce an-Nasr at-Taïr?”
Imoen looked from her brother to her brother’s eagle. “An-Nasr at-Taïr?” she repeated weakly. “Please tell me— No,” she said. “First thing first. Do keep that eagle away from my cat, brother. She’s looking at him meaningfully. I think that she wants to eat him.”
Sarevok crooked his head. “How odd, sister,” he said. “She had the strangest impression that your cat wanted to eat her. Something about meaningful looks—”
-----
At-Taïr cried out again when Sarevok released her with the orders to seek out a forest which ought to be nearby: a high, ear-splitting cry. Imoen’s brother followed the eagle with an enchanted, enamoured gaze; for a moment, he looked again, for all the things in the world, like a schoolboy smitten with love for the first time in his life.
Pangur, after a great deal of protests—all suddenly silenced when he was presented with a piece of meat to bite into—was set to watching the siblings’ packs. He was, as he proudly announced, quite resistant to magic; even so, Imoen would much rather he were not hit by some stray lightning bolt or ice storm when the practice started again.
(The healing potions had been of much use.)
-----
The workout was a fascinating experience, in many respects; not the least of which was that, for the first time in her life, Imoen found herself being not only the student, but also the tutor.
They had discovered this on the day before, in the evening, when they had been scribing the scrolls they had bought: between themselves, they shared a surprisingly great deal of knowledge of elementary combat magic, but it was unevenly distributed. Edwin had taught Imoen a mix of basic offensive spells and illusions from several schools; Sarevok’s learning was drastically different.
“All right,” Imoen then said over her chocolate, looking at the neatly scribbled rows and columns of runes, “so, here’s magic missile, chromatic orb, and, you say, that acid arrow and those stone skins I’m trying out tomorrow— This one is vocalise, and this one is magic dispelling. But the rest?”
Her brother, all old gold and myrrh, and sipping his own rich chocolate, shrugged. “Abjuration, divination, enchantments and necromancy. The first to protect against wizards, the second to dispel illusions, and the last two to control the living and the undead. I can do the killing myself.”
Imoen repeated the summary in her mind. “You must be really set on finding Irenicus, brother,” she said.
“I am surprised that you are not,” Sarevok replied calmly. “He killed two of your party, too.”
“You are correct, however,” he added. “I sent for news from Aran as soon as we arrived in the city. Apparently, he managed to convince the paladins to join the Thieves against the vampires, and they are combing the crypts under the old graveyard. But Irenicus hasn’t resurfaced.”
“He may be dead.”
“There is no reason why he should be dead, sister.”
“What did he do to you?”
The question burst out on its own, and she regretted it immediately: it touched on the personal matters they had both tacitly agreed not to talk about. For a moment, she had a vision of a much younger herself, yelling, How come you’re so sane all of a sudden?! She snorted: how she could have expected to receive an answer was beyond her.
But there was also another, much fresher memory.
“I mean, brother…” she said. “I saw you. As you are.”
There was a glimmer of curiosity as Sarevok leaned back in his chair. “You saw me,” he repeated thoughtfully. “I did not know that you could see the truth of matter, sister.”
“Sometimes,” Imoen replied. “But don’t change the topic. You’re barely holding yourself together, brother. There’s this veneer of coldness, but underneath it, it’s all hot and boiling and trying to escape—but, my point, actually, is, you are holding together.”
Sarevok was watching her coolly, clinically, without any great hostility, but without any promise to satisfy her curiosity, either; and she found herself adding, “If this is about what’s between you and Father, then I know about it already. Or,” she corrected herself, “at least, I suspect.”
The expression changed to a sort of wondrous amusement. “I think,” the man laughed, “that I should have killed you when I still had the chance, sister. Nevertheless. If you know that much already, then yes, I will tell you all, and hopefully satisfy that infernal nosiness which surfaces ever so often in those loaded remarks about my sleep— On one condition.”
Imoen put away her quill and pushed back her own chair. “What condition would that be, brother?”
“Quid pro quo.”
“Quid pro quo.”
“Yes,” Sarevok replied, standing up from the desk, and crossing the room over to a small table standing in a nearby corner. “You wish to speak of Irenicus, sister. Then we shall. But both.”
“The wizard did not explain himself,” he spoke on calmly in the pregnant silence which fell. “However, by comparing our… experiences, we may—or, at least, given your disinterest in the topic: I may—learn something of him.”
He turned around, returned to the desk and offered a glass filled with a golden liquid to Imoen. “Sherry,” he explained. “To loosen tongues and blunt the pain, should you agree to the terms of the compact.”
“No, thanks,” Imoen replied. “Chocolate will be enough for now, I think— You drink too much, brother.”
“Do I,” the man said, watching the glass of sherry in the light of the chandelier suspended under the ceiling. “Drink and fornication: poor man’s substitutes for killing and murder— Is that what you mean, sister? But one has to do something in bed when one cannot sleep.” He downed the cup; and, after a momentary consideration, also the other.
“Where is Mical?” his sister asked, suddenly interested.
“In bed. Asleep. Or, perhaps, with his friends. Or his mother. Or his girl. How should I know? He isn’t plotting your murder for his humiliation, if this is what you are asking. He’s too terrified of you to attempt that, sister. But we were to speak of Irenicus— This is what I need him for, in fact.”
“What is what you need him for?” Imoen asked, uncomprehending.
A brief, private half-smile crossed Sarevok’s face as he sprawled himself lazily in his chair again. “No. First: do you agree to the compact, sister?”
The scrolls were all forgotten by now. “You know perfectly that I do, brother.”
“Then, by all means, let us speak of Irenicus. Irenicus,” the man said dryly, “did me a great favour, one for which I will have to thank him before I kill him: he took a rabid animal, and mutilated it until it turned back into the resemblance of a man. Since I was an animal, he treated me like an animal… He made me relearn my mortal body: he hurt me, so that I would feel pain; he kept me hungry and thirsty, so that I would remember the import of drink and fodder; he took away my sleep; he made me aroused and afraid and— In short, he bolstered my every single animal impulse and instinct; every single one, save the one to kill: there was no one to kill. In the end, my mortal half prevailed; and I… remembered myself, I have no other word for it. That was the beginning.”
He took a sip of the chocolate from his cup, and continued, “At first, a glimmer of sanity: I tried to hide myself in insanity. Hide: the insane, obviously, has nothing to hide. Irenicus found me out in no time; when he did, he moved on to other things. Feelings. Emotions. I remember when he flayed Semaj—” He broke off, took another sip, and continued in the same tone, “I don’t believe you ever met Semaj. He was a… friend, of sorts. Might have been a lover, I do not remember. But I watched him and heard his screams and felt his pain and— I really did feel his pain,” he repeated, as if he did not expect her to believe him. “And then, Irenicus did not let me kill him. But he let me kill Angelo. Odd: all I now remember of Angelo is his name, and that skinless mask instead of a face… It had still felt like a good thing to kill him, and not only because it was my first kill in months. I wrung his neck when we were left together alone for a moment—”
“In any case, slowly, piece by piece, as I gained control, the taint started to disentangle and separate from my human self. What Irenicus meant to achieve beyond this, I don’t know; but I think that that time, the success of his experiments surprised even him… This time, I did manage to hide: I pretended to be still barely in control of myself… but I started to plan. I saw you as you were returned to your cage after some or other session of your own; I understood that you must be a sibling—”
He looked up at her. “Your turn, sister. What did Irenicus do to you?”
Imoen frowned; but Sarevok was not really interested in her feelings, she reminded herself. He only wanted information about Irenicus.
The thought cheered her up, and she set out to try and join lost fragments of sensations into a coherent whole; to fashion feelings into words; to stay herself, but remember that hurt, maimed, terrified, ignorant girl—
“Ignorance,” she said aloud. Yes: that was the key. “He— I think that, above all, he made me feel… powerless. Vulnerable. He explained nothing. He kept me weak, like you say he did with you. He cast his spells, and he cut me with those knives, and he hurt Xan and Kivan, and he told me to watch, but he never said what to watch for. He— I remember that feeling of complete ignorance about what was going on and uncertainty about what was going to happen next… There were moments when I just wished he told me what he wanted from me, just so that I could do it and he could kill me, because, I thought, anything would be better than that complete randomness—”
“He… He made sure that I knew that he was the one who was in power. But that was all I was to know. Apart from that… No rules. He could get everywhere—I mean, I don’t think he raped me, I don’t think he can, those dryads said something about that, I think—but he could get everywhere into my brain, my mind, and I was just stuck in that cage, with nowhere to escape—”
“I think,” she added suddenly, “that he might have been trying for what happened in Mae’Var’s guild. When I—killed Viconia. Murdered her. He wanted to make me feel so helpless and out of control that I would finally find my way into the taint? Except that it did not really work out… He was just too good at what he did. Too powerful. There was just no reason to fight him. There was even a reason to fight you, but not him. And I knew what you wanted.”
She gulped down the rest of her chocolate. It was cold.
She did not refuse the sherry this time; it burned in her throat. “He wanted two Bhaalspawn steaks, medium rare,” she said thoughtfully. “But at what dinner?”
“Us as we are now,” her brother agreed. “Aware of our powers, but not overcome by them.”
“No,” Imoen corrected. “He wanted us on edge, not in control of ourselves. In control, we could have refused to do what he wanted… He sure said a lot about untapped potential— Wait a moment. I remember. He said that about you as well, didn’t he? I remember when I thought you’d use me as your test bunny— But you— Father—”
Wide-eyed, she asked, “That’s what you need Irenicus for, isn’t it? You can’t reach into your other self, I think. Not much. Not without straining yourself. You’re keeping it contained, but when you draw on it, Father makes you pay for it. And, if there’s a body who knows how to get around this, it’s Irenicus… Oh, crap. How long has it been for you like this, brother?”
Sarevok crooked his head. “Have you drunk a potion of insight, sister? I call unfair advantage.”
“There is no unfair advantage, brother,” Imoen retorted, nonetheless pulling out another flask and throwing it in her brother’s general direction; as he caught it easily mid-air and drunk it all in one go, she said, “And you’re trying to change the topic again. Because that’s why you’re learning charms, isn’t it? You want to capture Irenicus. Not kill him.”
Sarevok laughed. “No, sister, I do not want to kill him. Not immediately.”
Imoen blinked at this blank statement, decided to avoid all the moral issues which suddenly forced themselves into her mind, and opted to say, instead, “Little brother, he must have years of experience in magic over you. What chances do you think you have?”
“What options do you think I have, little sister?” the man asked calmly. “If there existed a means which permitted me to hunt Irenicus at leisure, do you think I would be so foolish as not to exploit it?”
“You are holding yourself together, brother.”
“Yes,” Sarevok replied, with clear disgust in his voice. “I am, as you put it so aptly, sister, ‘holding myself together.’ Through denying half of my identity; through abstaining from drawing on my birthright and my heritage; through depriving myself of the potential to develop and become what I ought to be—I am holding myself together. And, make no mistake: if I must, I shall. I have will enough for that. If it takes this wretched, pitiful half-life to destroy the kinfolk, wipe out the board and reap the ultimate prize—then, sister, so shall it be. Am I not doted enough on my own? Had my mother not passed to me gifts of her own before she chose to sacrifice me on her god’s darkest altar? And have I let these assets lie idle, like so many fools do, never achieving mediocrity where, with a modicum of resolve, they might reach excellence? Look at me, sister,” he implored suddenly. “Look at me. Am I, even as a base human, not as worthy of godhood as that obsolete cretin who dares call himself our Father?”
Imoen, who, by this time, thought that she had seen all of her brother’s antics, slowly closed her mouth, blinked, and said, trying for casualness, “So that’s how you did it.”
He wasn’t even particularly trying, she thought. He knows better than to try to play for effect with me. But—
The man frowned. “Did what, sister?”
“Narked Father into trying to kill you,” Imoen replied vaguely, before amending, “I mean— I was wrong. Irenicus didn’t really do anything to you, did he, brother? At most, he brought you half the way. To the edge. Made you feel. But to think, you started on your own… When you don’t kill people in your sleep, when you don’t draw on the taint when you should, even when you’re angry—that cold shell over the fire, you do it to you yourself, you did it to you yourself, and that’s how… That’s your armour. You’re simply even more angry at Father for fiddling you— How?” she asked, not bothering to hide her curiosity anymore. “You told me you would tell me. How did you do it?”
Sarevok looked at her oddly, before laughing lightly. “The first time, you mean?”
When Imoen nodded, he shrugged. “I can learn from my mistakes, sister. I made an error in judgement—”
This time, Imoen did not halt her tongue. “You call almost starting a war an error in judgement, brother?! I’m curious, you know. What would be a major blunder on that scale? Actually exterminating a nation? A continent?”
Her brother’s eyes glimmered lightly as he finished, “—and let myself be used. But Irenicus spoke of unrealised potential, when I had thought I had reached the end of my capabilities in this mortal body; and there was no reason to distrust him. He had no purpose in lying. And I should have had no purpose in striking a war of, for lack of a better word, innocents; I should have gone straight for the kin. I realised this, slowly—”
He smirked briefly, bitterly. “Even so… At first, even as we escaped, I thought that the difficulty in reaching into the taint was the residue of Irenicus’ ministrations; that it would pass with time. It did not pass with time. You suspicions are correct, sister.” The smirk twisted into a much crueller version of itself, and Imoen had the sudden impression that Sarevok was almost daring her to comment on his weakness. “It is not entirely of my choice that I must only be human. Father makes sure that I know the price of my survival.”
Imoen, with her head on her forearms, and her forearms crossed on the desk, looked up at her brother, and said only, “But you healed Cernd.”
This time, Sarevok was quite clearly amused. “Little sister. You practically dared me to do it. How was I to refuse the challenge?”
“I did not know I was baiting you,” Imoen replied. “Damn. So many lost opportunities.”
A smile appeared, and quickly disappeared, as Sarevok said, “You want to know how to protect yourself, I take it? That is why you asked? You might as well have asked Cernd how he broke off his own addiction… You just live, knowing that nothing human can measure up to the killing. You find a reason to live, fix yourself a goal. Ambition. Vengeance. Love, if you’re sadistically inclined.”
“A throne.”
“Yes.”
Suddenly fed up and angry, Imoen said, looking into the glimmering, inhuman eyes, “You know, brother, I can see that you really care for it. Really, really care. And you know what? I think that yes, you would make for as good a god as half that bunch out there, and I would really wish you the best of luck in your endeavour… if only it did not involve my dying in the process.”
An angry scowl crossed the man’s face. “I told you, sister,” he said. “If, when, at the end of things, I stand before the Throne of Blood, over the fallen body of our Father, and the gods announce their verdict and count me into their kind—if, then, you are not there, it will not be because I will have willingly, knowingly, struck out first against you. I told you this. And I am not Father. I am not in the habit of breaking my word.”
Imoen snorted. “But if you are there, and I am not, then this will only mean that someone else will have killed me, will it not? One child to rise and claim the father’s legacy. For the rest—nothing. You may not kill me by your hand, brother. But the arithmetic remains the same. If you live, I die.”
For a moment, the man only watched her in silence; then, at last, he stroked his hand across his naked scalp, over the new tattoo which graced it, and then all the way to the back of his neck; and she remembered, completely inappropriately, how had been considering earrings, earrings with rubies and king’s tears in them, but, in the end, rejected the idea—because earrings were, after all, so terribly impractical—
“There is a new choral quartet in the city,” he said at last. “Amicae Aleninae. From the north. I have heard good things spoken about them— It is still early. Why don’t we call it a night, sister?” He gestured lazily to the scrolls.
“You know that you can’t show in the inn, brother. If the bards recognise you, the High Merchant will have to arrest you,” Imoen, unswayed, replied.
Her brother looked at her indolently. “I meant to invite them here, sister,” he said.
For a moment, Imoen did not comprehend. “Here? Oh, yes,” she said as she suddenly remembered. “We’re rich. We’re rich, and we’re young, and we’re healthy, and we’re not some half-wit idiots, either. And we’re not being tortured, and no one is trying to kill us right now, and we’re not trying to kill each other anymore, and we even have a home, even if it’s not really our home. We should be happy. Why aren’t we happy? No, brother,” she said, seeing that Sarevok moved, as if he wanted to say something. “I know that you’re about to say something to cheer me up. Do not try to cheer me up, brother. Not you. Not today. I don’t want to be cheered up by you today. Let’s just learn magic today. But tomorrow… don’t let’s fight tomorrow. It’s our last day together. Let’s try to make it a good day tomorrow, shall we, brother?”
-----
They tried to make it a good day; and, as Imoen offered to Sarevok a most shocking grasp, and showed him how to juggle Melf’s Minute Meteors, and froze the surface of the water in the lake and the cups with the spiced milk in it; Pangur immensely enjoyed the resulting ice cream—and as Sarevok showed his sister how to deflect spells, and reflect them back at the caster, and how to protect herself from fire, and cold, and acid, and electricity, and how to take down minor wizarding protections; and as they both put up fire shields, red to protect them from fire, and blue to them protect from cold—it was. Practice of magic could be done quid pro quo; and stone skins, Imoen decided, were, indeed, useful.
Then, an-Nasr at-Taïr returned, carrying a roe deer in her talons.
-----
They were laughing when the eagle cried, for some minor reason or other; but, at the cry of the eagle, they looked up. At-Taïr dove to land before them; she dropped the roe at their feet and, clearly proud of herself, settled on Sarevok’s braced forearm.
Whoa. She’s tough. I like that in chicks.
Cuff it, Pangur, Imoen ordered: Pangur had jumped off her shoulder, and was now inspecting the deer carefully, nudging it with his nose. “So, brother,” she said, pulling out a healing potion. “You have a hunting bird.”
“She found it in the forest, she tells me, and thought that we might do with fresh meat,” Sarevok said, kneeling next to her and the deer, and letting at-Taïr hop off to the ground. “What are you doing, sister?”
“What does it look like? It’s still alive, my cat tells me. We have food. And a crisp roast on fresh air is great, I agree, but I’m not skinning it. Are you skinning it?”
“No,” Sarevok replied firmly. “But we might take it back to the city.”
“For Itona? We might,” Imoen said; the wounds on the roe’s body had almost closed by this time, “but we won’t. Help me, brother.”
Together, they set the roe on its legs. “Run,” Imoen said, and added, “If you know any dryads, tell them that we would speak to them. We have some acorns to give them.” The chances that the deer understood human were almost non-existent, but, after the time spent with the druids, she decided not to disregard any, however minimal, chance that it just might.
She smiled, and added, “Two men behind you, brother. The one on your left is pulling out a crossbow.”
“Three men behind you, sister,” Sarevok replied calmly.
