 |
ow is Teleri?” Zhou asked him that morning. Pendaran rubbed the back of his neck with an ink-stained hand, his morning language work completed. The smell of breakfast wafted up the hall. Zhou had insisted he come downstairs early. There was business to attend to even though Pendaran had not been able to translate what that business was.
“Quiet. Unmoving.”
Zhou frowned and raised an eyebrow.
“I hope she isn’t dead,” Zhou said in Tyrian.
Pendaran blushed.
“I meant she is sleeping and resting a great deal,” he replied quickly in Tyrian, “And she keeps asking me to massage her feet.”
Zhou smiled gently.
“She talked to me last night,” Zhou said, speaking Tyrian now, “It is very sweet how much she loves you.”
“She didn’t tell you off again I hope?”
Zhou chuckled.
“You did pick a fiery one, but she suits you. You do not believe someone cares unless they dare to treat you harshly at need.”
Pendaran blushed, feeling transparent to his master, as he often did.
“Is that why you were so intimidating in the beginning?”
“I was genuinely angry and disgusted with you in the beginning,” Zhou replied in his blunt but gentle way, “However, when I saw that harshness made you easier to handle, I used it. Reading your confessions and testimonials, I recognized that it was part of your nature, as is often the case with those who have been wounded in the heart.”
“But you’re not harsh with me any more.”
“That may change if you continue to hide the truth from me.”
“I have not lied to you,” he protested and yet he felt naked and afraid that he had unconsciously made a misstep out of long roguish habit.
“You omit and dodge, but it is akin to lying. It tells me you do not trust me with the truth. What is it you fear will happen if I knew what you were hiding?”
“I am not hiding anything, Master.”
“Teleri told me about your nightmares. She asked me why I had not done anything to help you,” Zhou said pointedly, “And now you have violated my trust by lying to me.”
The burn of shame crawled over Pendaran’s flesh.
“I’m sorry.”
Zhou stopped, his face tense with anger as he turned to gaze upon Pendaran. Long moments passed in the narrow corridor, the faint stirrings of the kitchen disturbing the morning silence.
“What do you fear will happen if you tell me the truth?”
Pendaran swallowed.
“You’ll tell me to leave,” he whispered and then his mouth ran away with him, “I hated her, I never wanted her, but I was drowning and I didn’t want to die… and I didn’t want to lose Teleri, not after I’d almost died and she stayed with me… and our child… I wanted to see my daughter before I died… and Mabane… I didn’t know what to do. I know it was wrong and you’d be mad and I was stupid…”
“Pen,” Zhou murmured, “Look at me.”
Zhou’s hands were upon his shoulders, his fingers tightening as Pendaran broke down and sobbed. A part of him stayed detached, watching the small factures in his psyche meld into a single break. On the island he had not whimpered or pleaded for his life. He had struck a deal with Threnody knowing full well there was no bargaining with a demon. A vital part of him had fled from the pain and torment. Zhou had abandoned him out of necessity, but worse, he had abandoned himself.
“You are my friend and my apprentice. Though I may have to distance myself from you at times, I will not stop loving you. Do you hear me?”
“I don’t deserve it,” Pendaran wept, “I’m scum, I let her use me.”
Zhou put an arm around his shoulder and drew him out of the hallway. Tears blurred his vision and he had no clue where the man was taking him. They emerged into a brighter room, its green walls and furnishings familiar and the thick couch warm and comfortable beneath him as Zhou urged him to sit down. He slumped against the arm of the chair trying to regain his composure as Zhou stepped away to fetch a small glass of plum brandy, grumbling something about Mog’s appetite for spirits.
“Drink that.”
He gulped it down in a single swallow, hardly tasting it. Despite the sudden rush of heat that followed, the storm of emotions crashing against his composure stopped and calm returned.
“It is nearly breakfast and I need you to observe a meeting for which we are already late. I want you to take the rest of the day off and use that time to meditate and center yourself. At three bells tomorrow, you are to come to my study for the Rite of Grief.”
It was useless protesting. He lowered his eyes and nodded.
“Until then, know this, my friend. You spoke true when you told me you made the best of the bad choices you were given. You chose to live and I am grateful for that, as well you should be. You have much to live for.”
“I can’t help but think you’d be better off if I were dead.”
Zhou was taken aback by that statement, his eyes widening in horror.
“I never want to hear you say that again.”
Despite the strain of anger in his voice, Zhou’s dark eyes were sad and compassionate.
“It is a sin for me to doubt you after all you have done to help me. Forgive me, please.”
“Of course, my friend,” Zhou replied quietly, a faint huskiness to his voice, “Now we must set this aside. We will find a way to free you from Threnody. For now, focus and follow me.”
Pendaran nodded and followed Zhou from the room, straightening his plain gray robes and running his hand over his scalp to tidy his chestnut hair. They filed through the kitchen and the scurry of cooks and servants getting food and vessels ready for breakfast. Pendaran fancied that the cook would have chased him out if not for Zhou.
“There is a young woman seeking work here. She claims to have grown up in the orphanage but no one who was there with her is available to confirm it,” Zhou told him as they passed the scullery, “I find this suspicious. I want your impressions while I am questioning her.”
They passed through a narrow doorway into a steamy little backroom with a small round table and four of rickety chairs scattered around it. There was a door that lead out into the garden and a row of dirty boots and clogs sat beside it. A servant’s entrance. A basket of carrots rested at the center of the table and a plate containing several peeled ones sat before an elderly woman with a paring knife. She rose and greeted Zhou and nodded deferentially to Pendaran before gesturing toward the young woman cowering in the chair nearest the wall.
Pendaran sat across from her while Zhou sat beside the elder. He felt strangely guilty for not knowing her name for he had seen her a number of times helping to serve meals or gathering up dirty crockery at the end of one. Zhou engaged her in conversation, their words rapid syllables whose meaning largely escaped him. The young woman stared at her hands, head bowed in an attitude of perpetual shame.
Her long black hair was tangled and dirty. She had been living rough and judging by the hollowness of her jaws, not eating well. A patina of grime clung to her skin and her plain slate blue wool overcoat was torn and ratty about the edges. Pendaran rose slowly, observing that she twitched when his chair legs groaned against the flagstones. He walked into the kitchen and picked up a freshly baked bun cooling on one of the long baking racks. One of the cooks scowled at him but he feigned ignorance when she told him off in Canthan and went back to his seat.
The young woman raised her face slightly, her warm brown eyes gazing upon the morsel with a faint flicker of longing. He sensed her neediness, the rawness of her desperation gnawing against the edges of his consciousness. She was difficult to read, however. Like an animal, there were no individual thoughts, only hunger and pitiful need.
“Want bun?” he asked her, knowing his words would seem stilted and unpleasant to her ears. She raised her face now, glancing anxiously toward Zhou, and when she was certain she was of no consequence to anyone but Pendaran, she nodded sadly and once more looked at her lap. Pendaran tossed it, an action that caused the older woman to gasp and made Zhou frown. The young woman did not see it coming and fumbled with it moments before it struck her forehead, her reflexes dulled by weakness.
“If she is an assassin, then she is also an amazing actress.”
“I see,” Zhou replied, his dark eyes flicking toward the woman who was now wolfing down the bun as if she feared it would be stolen away.
“Madame Cheng is a little annoyed that I keep foisting hard luck cases on her,” Zhou said, “I expect my fears were unfounded.”
“If you have had three attempts on your life, it pays to be cautious,” Pendaran replied.
“Agreed. I will see to it she is restored to health and given shelter. Thank you, Peng Ren. You are dismissed.”
He rose quietly as Zhou continued to talk with Madame Cheng. Something caught his eye, a flick of metal perhaps, or a downturn of brow. The young woman rose suddenly with a throwing dagger clutched in her hand. Pendaran bounded forward, striking the table with his hip so that it pinned her harshly against the wall. The dagger landed with an angry thud in the doorjamb behind Zhou’s head. She shrieked an animal curse and thrashed against the table, winning free and leaping onto the chair where she launched herself toward Pendaran, hands outstretched.
Madame Cheng screamed in fear, huddling in the corner as Zhou leapt to his feet and shouted an incantation. Wreathed in magenta, the wild woman bore Pendaran to the floor shrieking in pain as she doubled her fists to pound his face. He rolled out from under her knees as an envenomed dagger flashed into her hand. His heart pounded and he lost himself to terror, screaming for help as he recalled the attack in Lion’s Arch. He staggered as the blade sank into the back of his thigh and the sticky chill of flowing blood crawled down his leg. She shrieked as Zhou’s hex punished her again and crashed against the wall as she uttered the beginning of an enchantment and was brutally cut off by a harshly uttered word from his master. Staggering, she slid down the wall, nearly incoherent with pain as Pendaran limped to Zhou’s side. In a fit of panic, he shouted the words of a newly acquired hex, one that protected him from the brutal rush of an oncoming warrior. Predictably, she launched toward Pendaran again, only to fall back clumsily as the hex punished her.
It was enough to finish her. Her narrow form collapsed with a harsh gasp and she grew still. Cold sweat erupted from his flesh as he stared at his assailant, horrified as an acrid black smoke curled from her still form. The lithe young woman’s body was replaced with a hideously spined monster, its slavering jaws blackened with ichor and reeking drool.
Zhou was kneeling behind him, his hands gently probing Pendaran’s wound. Oddly, he could not feel it now, but he had a sensation of floating and the world was turning an amusing shade of emerald green.
“Pendaran!”
He turned his head to answer Zhou and the room did a strange flip-flop around him. He reached out to brace himself for fear of falling over, grateful when his master captured him and lifted him off the ground.
“Pen!” Zhou cried as he staggered slightly beneath his weight. Now others were shouting in Canthan and there was a general bustle amid the swirling emerald confusion.
“’s green,” he mumbled, “’m gonna throw up.”
Which he did, to his shame, all over the beautifully tailored brocade of Zhou’s black robe.
“Sorry,” he moaned shortly before passing out.
<< Previous Next >>
|
