“I’m telling you this,” I insisted, trying to seize the conversation, to hold it together, “because I want to be honest.”
“And what, exactly, is it you’re telling me? You’re not Kettral. You came to Dombang to start a riot, maybe a revolution.” He paused, testing the various possibilities. “If you’re with them, I’ll kill you before we ever get to the delta. I’m about finished with betrayal for today.”
Truth is like a snake. If you’re vigilant, you can keep it caged. If you’re brave, you can set it free. Only an idiot, however, lets half of it out hoping to keep the rest penned in.
“I am a priestess of Ananshael,” I said. The words felt good, right. “Trained in Rassambur. I came here, came home, in service to my god.”
Ruc was silent a long time, but when he finally spoke, he didn’t sound shocked.
“Skullsworn.”
“It is not a term we prefer.”
“You came back to Dombang to murder people by the boatload, and you’re worried about names?” I could hear him shake his head. “I should kill you now. All of you.”
“You couldn’t,” I said quietly. “Besides. If they really are sending us into the delta, you’re going to need us. You’re going to need me.”
“So you can put a knife in my back?”
“So I can stand beside you.”
“Is Two-Net Skullsworn, too?”
“Chua is what she says she is.”
I could hear him shaking his head. “You sure? Sounds like she killed her beloved husband quick enough.”
“You’ve seen people die of snake bites,” I replied. “That knife was a kindness.”
To my surprise, Ruc started laughing. The sound was hollow, rusted, mirthless. “Is that what you tell yourself? Is that how you justify it?”
“We learn early not to try to justify ourselves. Our devotion can be difficult to understand.”
“Then why are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you because I want you to know the truth.”
It’s easy, when you’ve lived a long time among women and men for whom death holds no sting, to forget how the rest of the world sees Ananshael’s mercy. I didn’t expect Ruc to rejoice at the revelation. I expected him to be furious and confused, to demand answers, some of which I couldn’t provide, some of which weren’t mine to give. I expected the conversation to be difficult, but my mind was too full of the peace and beauty of Rassambur. When I thought of Ananshael’s faithful, I thought of people like Kossal and Ela, men and women vibrant, full of life.
It seems stupid now, but I didn’t reckon on Ruc’s disgust.
I could feel whatever heat had been between us draining away. I reached out through the darkness, found his shoulder. He caught my hand in a vicious grip, and for a moment I thought everything would be all right after all. Then he let it drop. I heard the scrape of his boots on the stone as he moved to the far side of the cell.
“Ruc—” I said.
The silence swallowed his name. I could hear his breathing, heavy as though he’d been running for miles, as though he were holding some impossibly heavy weight, unable to put it down.
I began again: “Ruc—” but everything beyond his name seemed useless.
The truth was out, free. Half of it, anyway. I stared into the cage of my mind, wondering what I had done.
22
Instead of flowers, here are the still-spasming corpses of a dozen traitors.
I tried, as the guards hauled open the door to our cell, as I blinked watering eyes against the dim, blinding light, to imagine saying those words to Ruc. For a heartbeat, it seemed like a plausible peace offering. These were the same men, after all, who had betrayed him, corrupted his city, and usurped his fortress.
“Who’s in charge?” Ruc demanded, blinking, bulling forward even though, after a whole night locked in perfect darkness, he was just as blind as the rest of us. “Where are my men? The ones who aren’t traitors, that is?”
The nearest soldier, a huge man who looked as though his muscles had been molded sloppily out of mounds of river mud, slammed a cudgel into Ruc’s head. After years of bare-knuckle fighting, Ruc knew how to take a blow, but there’s only so much technique to getting bashed in the skull with a length of wood. He stumbled into a wall, caught his balance with a shoulder against the rough stone, then turned back to the giant who had hit him.
“Where are my men?” he asked again.
I glanced over my shoulder. Chua, Ela, and Kossal were up. The two priests looked no less deadly than usual, although I could hardly count on them to back whatever play I made. I could take down the brute with the cudgel at least, and then go from there. A pile of bodies wasn’t the most traditional romantic gift, but Ruc and I had never been too keen on roses or rubies. Maybe getting an early start on some revenge would help to heal the rift I’d hacked between us with my idiotic honesty. It would be something, at least; a gesture of good faith.
One heartbeat later, and I’d discarded the idea.
It wasn’t practically feasible, for one thing. There had to be two dozen guards, all wearing mail, most with loaded flatbows. I’m fast with my hands, but not that fast. Even so, I might have taken the chance—except that sort of wholesale slaughter was expressly forbidden by the terms of my Trial. It would be no good finally falling in love if I’d already failed.
The huge Greenshirt—he was still wearing the uniform, although, like the rest of them, he seemed to have a flexible interpretation of the loyalties it entailed—raised his cudgel for another blow. I stepped smoothly into the gap.
“Might as well save the questions,” I said, speaking to Ruc even as I met the big bastard’s eye. “I have a feeling we’re about to meet whoever’s in charge.”
The Greenshirt smiled. There is something chilling in the eyes of people who believe completely in their own rightness.
“Indeed,” he replied. “Indeed you are.”
One by one, they bound us at the wrists. I tried to catch Ruc’s gaze as the guardsman shoved him toward the door. Tried and failed. The man who had wrapped me in his arms two nights before walked past me as though I were a doorpost—not even a person, but some architectural necessity utterly beneath his notice. I studied his straight back as he strode down the corridor, led and flanked by armed guards. It was hard to decide whether I hated that unrelenting pride or admired it. How would I have felt if he’d glanced back at me, showed some sign of confusion, of weakness? Would that have made me love him more or less? As with most matters pertaining to my heart, I had no idea.
The Greenshirts motioned to the rest of us to follow. Kossal shook his head, as though irritated at the whole thing, while Ela seemed to be making eyes at the man who’d been beating Ruc. I turned away from them both, played the docile prisoner as the soldiers marched us up the stone steps, out of the subterranean chill and damp, into the delta’s midmorning swelter.