Marith had been lying with his head in her lap, letting her stroke his hair. He sat up and looked at her. It had been a very hot day riding: his face was tired and drawn. Perhaps this wasn’t a good time to ask, she thought. But she had to know, and she had waited long enough. She had a right to know. The night air was still and harsh; she felt something in it approaching, some fear, and the words burst out of her.
‘Ah.’ He sighed. ‘So we come to it. Nobody has yet dared ask. Whether I want to tell you … What could I have done that was so very terrible my father would cast out his son and heir? All the things my family have ever done, and what offence could I have committed that was so terrible it couldn’t be forgiven?’ He frowned. ‘I’m rambling. I’m sorry. You truly want to know?’
Thalia nodded, slowly. Marith drained his wine cup. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them they seemed darker. ‘I killed someone. A man. The heir to the richest and most powerful of my father’s nobles. Carin Relast, his name was.’ He shut his eyes again, his hand gripping the cup in his hand so tightly his knuckles went white. ‘My best and only friend.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
Two young men, boys really, stand looking at each other against the backdrop of a crowded room. One is slim and dark-haired, the other stockier and fair-blond. They stand in the common room of an expensive, bustling inn, brightly lit glass and polished tables, windows open to a walled garden filled with the scent of summer flowers. A gathering silence spreads around them, eating away at the very walls.
The dark-haired boy holds a sword clutched in his hand. The blade of the sword is covered in blood. The fair-haired boy staggers backwards, sways on his feet, crumples slowly to the ground at the dark-haired boy’s feet. There is a great wound in his chest where his heart is. His eyes stare in confusion. The dark-haired boy stares back. The look on his face is impossible to describe.
The room is utterly silent now, save for the drip of blood from the sword. The few other people in the room sit frozen. The dark-haired boy stares and stares. Then he throws back his head and screams. The sound he makes is like the noise an animal might make as it is ripped apart. It echoes round the room. There is another silence. The dark-haired boy looks down at the blood on his hands, the blood that has burst out from the fair-haired boy’s heart. He raises his hands to his mouth and licks it off. Then he sinks down to the ground beside the fair-haired boy and begins to laugh. He is still laughing when men in green-tinted armour come to take him away. He does not resist, does not even look at them. Other men carefully lift the fair-haired boy’s body and carry it out into the sunlight. A woman’s voice rings out, wailing in pain. The men turn back to the room. Slowly, carefully, they kill every person there.
Chapter Thirty-Six
‘Why?’ Thalia asked after a long while.
Marith rubbed roughly at his face. ‘Because of what he was doing to me. Because otherwise he would have ended up killing me. Because I loved him. Because he knew me.’ I don’t know why, he thought. I don’t know why. I’ll never know.
Why do we do anything? he thought.
‘And your father banished you for it?’
‘My father couldn’t give a damn.’ Marith drained his cup again, his fingers hovering over the wine skin resting beside him. He refilled his cup, took a few sips then pushed it roughly away, so that it fell and the wine spilled out dark as blood in the dust. He watched the pool of wine spreading for a moment. ‘Carin’s father, however …’
He retrieved his cup, filled it again, drank again, scratched his face again. ‘My father would have ignored it, but the Relasts made too much trouble. They’re distant kin of ours, hold the island of Third, the nearest to the mainland. Powerful and rich. Lord Relast, in particular, is not a man even my father would want to cross. And I think … I think now he hated me even before. Lord Relast, I mean. I don’t need to think to know my father hates me. That all the kindness and generosity he showed me as Carin’s friend was part of the game. Sometimes … sometimes I think he put Carin up to it. Made him love me. Made him destroy me. Thought he could control me, through him. So then when I killed him … He played his most precious piece, and lost. And so he was angry. And my father had to appease him. And my father loathes me anyway, so he threw me away. He has another son, after all. One without my … problems. Nobody ever wagered hard coin on whether Ti would make it through the next half year alive and with his mind still intact. The odds of my surviving much longer, however, were so low it was barely worthwhile making the wager. My father just cut his losses early. Ended it.’
Silence. ‘Ended what?’ Thalia asked at last in a quiet, confused voice. ‘Why should he loathe you? Why shouldn’t you stay alive? Why should people wager on it? I don’t understand. Any of this.’
Beautiful, and proud, and certain, and full of joy. Somewhere far away Marith could hear something screaming. His voice. Screaming.
‘You haven’t realized?’ He laughed harshly. ‘But then you wouldn’t, of course. Ask Tobias. Ask him about how Carin ruined me. I’m sure he’d love to tell you everything about me and my secrets.’
She stood up, and Marith thought she was going to walk away. All gone, he thought. All lost. Sorrow and ruin. A dead man and a living woman, both too far beyond him to come back. For a moment he saw, not the woman, but Carin standing before him. There was dust where Carin’s heart should have been. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered, but his lips were too dry to speak.
Carin had known what he was. What he could be. What was inside him, clawing at him to get out. Help me, Carin, he’d begged over and over. Help me blot it out. I love you. Help me. And Carin had helped him. Oh, he had. Drink and drugs and ruin and all done out of such love. Kind.
Perhaps he’d killed Carin to spare him. So Carin didn’t have to see what he would become.
You must hate me now, I suppose, he’d said to Thalia. If you didn’t before. And you’d probably be right to. Everyone hates and fears me. What I am.
What I will be.
It’s better, he thought. If she walks away. Then she won’t have to see, either.
And then Thalia knelt down beside him, and placed her arms around him, and kissed his forehead that was hot and dizzy with pain. He shuddered at her touch: she held him and there was light in her, and the light burned. He did not want the light. He wanted to go back into the dark and stay there, where nothing could hurt him, where he belonged. I’ll kill you too, he thought. Keep away from me. She was silent, holding him. Her skin smelled sweet and warm. He was half unsure who she was, Thalia or Carin, but he clutched at her, burying his face in her hair.
She began murmuring something in Literan under her breath. Praying for him. Praying to her cursed God.